Youlbury House

Youlbury House is a Grade II listed modernist residence located in Youlbury Woods, near the Youlbury Scout Activity Centre and the hamlet of Boars Hill in Oxfordshire, England. The house was designed by landscape architect Hal Moggridge and built between 1969 and 1971 for Lord Goodhart, a prominent barrister and Liberal Democrat peer. It is considered a rare example of domestic modernist architecture in rural Oxfordshire, incorporating minimalist design principles, natural materials, and a strong visual relationship with the surrounding woodland. The site previously housed a substantial Victorian country estate created by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, known for his excavation of the Minoan palace at Knossos. The original house, built in 1893, was demolished mid-20th century, but many elements of Evans’s garden layout survive, including stone staircases, the ornamental lake, woodland paths, and garden structures. Several original features—such as water tanks and sculptures—remain integrated into the landscape. History The hamlet of Boars Hill, located approximately three miles (4.8 km) south-west of Oxford, remained largely treeless until the late 19th century, when new residents constructed country houses and enclosed them with walls, fences, and tree plantings. Original Victorian house The original house, initially just called Youlbury, was built in 1893 by Sir Arthur Evans for his wife Margaret, daughter of E. A. Freeman. Margaret died that year, but Evans ahead with the house plans and created the landscape gardens, the artificial lakes with the bathing huts and a waterlogged punt, as well as the house and its viewing platforms over the Vale of the White Horse and Berkshire Downs. Evans designed the gardens with tangled paths overhung with pink and white rhododendrons under a canopy of oak and pine, Himalayan poppies, and strawberry trees. The gardens were maintained by a team of at least ten gardeners. The grounds of the house included a tennis court and a croquet lawn. The gardens were designed with the idea of maintaining a balance between cultivated spaces and the natural woodland environment. James Stewart Candy, who lived there as a child and later became Mayor of Abingdon-on-Thames, describes the house in his autobiography as containing many rooms, pictures, tapestries, a large library, twenty-two bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a Roman bath. Outside one of the bathrooms was the head and shoulder of a bear from the Carpathian Mountains that had attacked Sir Arthur's brother, Norman. The house had a small museum of Cretan and Stone Age artefacts as well as New Zealand jade ceremonial weapons. Arthur Evans's sister Joan felt that the house at Youlbury was aesthetically unappealing due to a series of "unattractive extensions". Shortly before the death of his father, Sir John Evans, in 1908, Arthur had the family's collections delivered to Youlbury, where they were housed temporarily until he donated the first group—primarily Anglo-Saxon artefacts—to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford later that year. He also donated a significant portion of the Youlbury estate grounds to the Scout movement. In November 1918, in the aftermath of World War I, Youlbury House became the site of a war memorial facing the Berkshire Downs. A path known as the Peace Path was constructed leading to the memorial. The path was distinguished by two scarlet oaks, planted to be symbolic of peace. In the summer of 1926, during the British Association's meeting in Oxford, Arthur Evans hosted a major event at Youlbury, showcasing both his own and his father's collections, including objects from the Stone, Bronze, Minoan, Iron Age, and Saxon periods, as well as medieval jewellery, coins, and medals. This was the final occasion on which the full collections were displayed together. In 1927, John Evans's prehistoric artefacts were formally transferred to the Ashmolean Museum. Through his will, Arthur Evans bequeathed the remainder of his antiquarian collections to the Ashmolean. Youlbury House hosted guests of political and societal influence, among them Gilbert Murray, a founder of the League of Nations, and Lord Baden Powell, who visited and endorsed the site as a new headquarters for the Scouts as the original headquarters was seen as insufficient for their growth. Evans resided at Youlbury House, except when in Knossos, and lived there until his death in 1941, and the house was later offered for sale at auction. William Goodhart attended the sale and submitted a bid, which, despite being made in jest, was the only bid received, resulting in his purchase of the property. After unsuccessfully attempting to donate it to Oxford University, and the house was left in a state of disrepair, he eventually had the original house demolished. The new modernist house In 1966, William Goodhart acquired part of the land from his brother and commissioned a new house on the site, and a new Youlbury House was designed by Hal Moggridge as a holiday and weekend home at the request of William Goodhart QC, the son of jurist Arthur Lehman Goodhart. The structural engineering was carried out by Ove Arup and Partners for over four decades. The property served as a country residence for the barrister William Goodhart QC and his wife, Celia Goodhart, and was used by multiple generations of their family. Architecture and design The house, set within 9.6 acres of gardens and grounds, comprises six bedrooms and was designated a Grade II listed building in July 2009 for its architectural and historic interest as a residence built in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Youlbury House project is one of only three residential buildings ever designed by Moggridge. It incorporates modernist motifs, with clean lines and a strong integration with the surrounding landscape. He drew inspiration for his design from the philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright, who emphasised architectural harmony with the natural environment, as well as from the Finnish modernist Alvar Aalto and prominent post-war buildings such as the Royal Festival Hall. The design has been compared to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and features stylistic elements reminiscent of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He later described it as his most substantial early commission, recalling that the site was heavily overgrown and had to be physically cleared by hand during the surveying phase. Moggridge's wife assisted in the early stages of the work, at a time when he was operating as an independent designer without additional staff. Initially, Moggridge intended for the entire front façade of the house to be constructed from glass, in keeping with architectural trends of the 1970s. However, the design was modified following concerns from his parents about excessive brightness and exposure, leading to a revised structure where windows appeared as apertures puncturing the wooden walls. The structure consists of concrete floors supported on precast columns, each subtly varied in shape at different levels and designed to taper as they rise, reminiscent of the classical "hierarchy of the orders". The external cladding is made of non-load-bearing western red cedar, backed with insulation and plasterboard. Internally, the house is anchored to the sloped site by a single load-bearing wall, while all other interior partitions are brick. The plan appears rectangular from the exterior (aligned northeast–southwest), but inside it is more complex. A kinked central hallway runs diagonally through the building and plays a key role in light diffusion and spatial arrangement. The entrance level contains a kitchen and dining room to the north, and a corridor leading to the master bedroom and two family rooms to the south. A concrete staircase on the diagonal axis connects this level to a large, south-facing playroom below and, above the master bedroom, a dramatic double-height drawing room. The living room is characterised by a curved Parana pine ceiling that appears to float in space, enhanced by flashgaps at the ceiling edges. The balustrade is made of cement mimicking concrete, and built-in ash wood furnishings run throughout. Heating is integrated within these wooden fittings. The dining room features full-height aluminium-framed windows with clerestory glazing, and a set of built-in hotplates on an ash base—a motif repeated as a desk in the study, for which original design drawings dated July 1971 still survive. Throughout the house, vertical aluminium windows in timber soffits are paired with horizontal clerestory glazing. The principal entrance is located on the lowest elevation of the house, framed by timber surrounds, while the side entrance is marked by a projecting wooden canopy. Natural light is a central feature of the design, facilitated by skylights—some of which were added later—angled staircases, and the open-plan organisation that maximises sunlight and forest views. Gallery References External links Historic England List Entry for Youlbury House WowHaus article on Youlbury House Flickr image depicting the view from the original Youlbury House