High & Over is a definitive work in the evolution of the modern country house. It was commissioned by Bernard Ashmole, who later became director of The British Museum. In Amyas Connell, he found an architect willing to not just imitate the crisp white walls of the new continental style, but improve on it, creating a house that transcended the gaudy stylings of Art Deco despite its rich use of materials like chrome and marble, its glass-encased spiral staircase and circular swimming pool.

The building, completed in 1929, was an avant-garde shock that symbolised the start of a new architectural order, viewed admiringly by Pevsner as well as the not-always-modern-friendly Country Life.

The house’s history is also symptomatic of the wider shifts that have affected pioneering modern structures in the UK. Subdivided and altered, with additions removed and encroaching suburbia on all sides stripping the ‘country house’ appellation and dulling its splendid white-walled isolation, High & Over fell out of favour, like so many houses of its ilk. Renovation and restoration were time-consuming and expensive, especially given the advanced and often experimental nature of its original reinforced concrete construction, but today the ground floor has been returned to its original plan and colour scheme.

Photography: French + Tye

Our From the Archive series takes excerpts and images from ‘The Modern House’ by Jonathan Bell, Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill – a publication written and produced to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Produced in 2015, this book offers our own distinctive snapshot of what it means to live in a modern way in Britain.