This extraordinary early 20th-century country villa is a masterpiece of Modernist design, in the midst of a picturesque woodland garden not far from Esher in Surrey. It was designed by the architect Patrick Gwynne for his family – his father, mother, sister and himself – and completed in the early summer of 1938. Gwynne lived in the house for the rest of his life, continuing to keep the building fashionably up-to-date until his death in 2003. His friend, the architect Sir Denys Lasdun, observed that The Homewood was ‘the great love of Patrick’s life’.