Amyas Connell-Designed Modernist UK Home for Sale

High and Over is no ordinary home. This legendary concrete, Y-shaped building, designed by New Zealand-born architect Amyas Connell, is the UK’s first modernist house, deemed to be “of outstanding importance” by English Heritage. And now, it is for sale, Emma Magnus reports for the Evening Standard.

The home, completed in 1931, was built for Bernard Ashmole, an author and art historian who later became keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum.

Given Ashmole’s classical background, Connell’s design combined the straight lines and blocky geometry of modernism with Roman influences – including, for example, the Roman Garden with its swimming pool, dug by hand by Ashmole and his gardener.

When High and Over was completed, a British Pathé news clip described the house as a trailblazer, stating: “One leaves this house feeling that a courageous thing has been done and a purpose fulfilled, and that a home has been built that is both practical and beautiful.”

Eltham-born Connell won the British Prix de Rome in Architecture in 1926 and effectively launched the Modernist architectural style in Great Britain.

He died in London in 1980, aged 79.

Original article by Emma Magnus, Evening Standard, October 19, 2022.

Photo by The Unique Property Company.