Homewood 1

There is an offshoot of Claremont Landscape Gardens called Homewood, a modernist house built in the 1930's by a young architect, whose family funded this rather expensive venture by selling off a small Welsh town or some such.

Now owned by the National Trust on the basis that it is rented out to someone who does not mind parties tramping round alternate Fridays or some such. A quick peek at the Savills web site suggests that the ordinary rent of a house of this sort might be of the order of £15,000 a month. Perhaps I will phone them up and ask about discount for tramps.

The gardens, while handsome, looked like the work of a gardener neither being paid that much nor being much supervised. So perhaps the tenant is away a lot and is content to let the Trust people worry about the gardens.

The form is that you make a booking and then turn up for the bus from from nearby Claremont, a bus complete with the rather loud do not sign snapped above. Which we did Friday last, having taken a sausage roll in the Claremont café and having been thinking about going for years. You then get a couple of trusties who show you some of the house.

A handsome house with a handsome interior, with the interior sporting a lot of tropical hardwood, rather in the way of the not that much later Royal Festival Hall or, indeed, my secondary school in Cambridge. It would probably be hard to get either the timber or the craftsmen to work it these days.

The sort of chap that designed his own furniture as well as his own house. Again, handsome, but perhaps a touch eccentric. The main desk included a old phone, but not so old that it did not sport a small screen and a full keyboard. Probably an STC 3911 Executel, the first time I have seen such a thing, described at reference 1 as 'possibly the most well featured desktop telephone terminal ever manufactured'.

The sort of chap also who was into numerology and, for example, all the vertical heights & measurements were multiples of 20 inches. Odd, given that he was into Continental architects (he loathed the Lutyens' brand of fancy but fake cottage, from around the same time), that he didn't do this in metric.

Handsome black plastic finger plates for the electric light switches. A touch of the old in the form of a large Italian chandelier hanging in the main staircase, possibly Murano. The bathroom we were shown also looked old. Perhaps the ones we we not shown were a bit more up to date.

On the way back to Claremont we discovered the entrance to Esher Common which included a map board. Marked down for a future visit.

PS: I learned after consumption that the interior of the sausage roll was described as being a pork based filling. Honest enough I dare say, but scarcely appetising.

Reference 1: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5910/STC-3911-Executel/. STC for the once proud British company, Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd, but with the abbreviation now appropriated by the Saudi Telephone Company. See reference 2.

Reference 2: http://www.stc.com.sa/wps/wcm/connect/english/helpAndSupport/contact.