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This photo is part of the Ruislip and Amersham - 2012 Set:
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Extract from "More Rough Travel Notes with an Architectural Eye - 2012":
.....Ward later said “Architecture for us was a whole subject, not just a Modern movement.” A way of life. They aimed for and won the coveted Rome Scholarship in 1926, and it was in Rome that they met Bernard Ashmole, noted archaeology scholar and head of the School there. Yes, you’ve got it, Prof Bernard Ashmole was descendent of Elias Ashmole after whom the Ashmolean Museum we visited in Oxford is named. During their course they studied the geometry of historic Roman architecture — said to have influenced their planning ideas even in the Modern Movement. And they travelled widely in Europe researching the cultures and built development. Ashmole was admiring of their architectural talents, and in due time Connell was asked to design the Ashmoles’ new house in Amersham. That house, now well-noted for its significant contribution to modern beginnings, will be climax of our Amersham excursion. While the Modern expression was fresh, of its time, it wasn’t a simplistic polarity, but also learnt from historic skills.
So here we are now, walking up streets of suburban Ruislip. Mature, it looks pleasant-enough in a conservative way though doesn’t appear to have changed greatly since the 1930s except for car garages and cluttering television aerials. Houses are traditional, brick or pebble-dashed with pitched-tiled roofs, early 20th C, and subdued darker colouring. Natural, but weak, a bit sentimental phoney. Even touches of mock-Tudor here and there.
We stroll along Park Ave. But what’s this? Brand-spanking new white, sharp rectangular modern. Crisp. Here are Ward’s three adjoined units, (called semi-detached in estate-agent propaganda) — nos 97 - 101. Intended as part of a Parkwood Estate. At their mid-’30s construction time they were aesthetically controversial for such a locality — too startling, too Continental. They’re Modern Movement family homes of concrete walls, flat but occupied roofs, expanses of glass, all in stark contrast in appearance, and to a more-compact-future social agenda. Something of a response to Corbusier’s urban-modern villas of Paris. They have Bauhaus-like balconies relieving, or rather emphasizing, the flat snow-white frontage.....
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