Words Lucy Drane
Photography Elliot Sheppard

The new year may be lurching forward, but we’re looking behind us as well as ahead. As such, we’re throwing ourselves right back to the first issue of our magazine and to a particularly special house we once visited in Somerset. A small number of homes are more than just great: they become paragons of a movement, classic of their generation. The hunky brutalism of Peter Womersley’s Valley Spring is one, standing as testament to the architect’s restless experimentation and enduring genius.

I’m digesting views and drinking coffee in the dining room of Valley Spring, a Grade II-listed modernist masterpiece two miles south of Bath, in Somerset. The sky is grey and a veil of mist cloaks the bucolic scene across Horsecombe Vale. My exaltations are warmly humoured by Liz, the house’s owner, who seems familiar with such a fervent response from delighting visitors.

Valley Spring was designed in 1968 by Peter Womersley, considered, for reasons becoming clear to me, the most talented British domestic architect of his time. It was Womersley’s final private project, a commission from his brother, John, and is the only house of the modern period in Bath.

Making use of the sloped plot, Womersley lay the house low in the landscape, entirely concealing it from the upper arterial roads of the city. There is a seductive reveal on the approach as the house unveils itself, bit by bit, with each descending curve of the driveway. At the foot of the slope, the entire ensemble is revealed in all its glory: a series of glass boxes poised between solid brick columns; brutalist geometric forms striding laterally across the valley in a feat of architectural composition and balance.

Inside, the open, free-flowing spaces articulate the late 1960s zeitgeist, when conventional arrangements were being challenged and flexible, informal living was on the up. The interconnection of rooms follows a wonderful Miesian-like grid set over four levels, with three distinctive flat-roofed pavilions, each interlinked by an open-tread timber staircase. There is an indisputable influence from the Modernist heavyweights, most notably Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, who had, in turn, been an avid follower of Womersley’s work.

It’s all a far cry from the vertical blueprints of Bath’s Georgian counterparts, with their segregated servants’ quarters and hierarchical layouts. What’s impressive, though, is that the tradition-breaking design still holds appeal today. Liz and her family were in an archetypal townhouse in the city centre before moving here and it was a liberating transition, she tells me, to go from four stone storeys stacked on top of each other to this open space, with walls comprised largely of glass.

Some changes have been made, though. The original plan allotted a small cellular kitchen and bathroom, typical of the time, but less amenable for modern living – these rooms were opened out and enlarged in a significant refurbishment 2013. A westerly wing was also added to the existing self-contained annexe, interlinked by means of a glass walkway to be sensitively integrated into the bones of the original structure. A joyful pairing of frameless windows and overhanging eaves hark to California’s Case Study houses, carving out a series of courtyards which merge the inside and outside spaces.

Fastidious in their attempts to authenticate Womersley’s original intent, the current owners redressed the exterior walls to a dark shade of grey. They had been painted an ivory white by their predecessors, which caused the house to protrude from the landscape. The timber-clad ceilings were restored and each of the vast panels of glazing were replaced for efficiency.

It’s all worked to put the spotlight back on Womersley, a master in wedding his buildings to their rural settings. There exists an intimate relationship here between Valley Spring and the valley itself, reminiscent of the house and studio he designed for painter and textile designer Bernat Klein, slotted into a pocket of the Scottish Borders, and the mid-century masterstroke Farnley Hey, with its spectacular Pennine backdrop.

In all of these projects, Womersley’s fear of design atrophy fired an integral drive for his buildings to move forward; to offer something new and original. Safe to say, he achieved that here. The dark anthracite outline of its eaves and umber exterior walls could hardly sit in starker contrast to the honeyed stone of Bath’s centuries-old streets. The house is a triumphant antithesis to that. Yet the brilliance of the building is that its robust addition to the surroundings is a harmonious one. It is a triumphant modernist monument that punctuates the Somerset landscape with bold composition and enduring materiality; a true classic.