Words Hannah Clugston
Photography Neil Perry

Another of Womersley’s celebrated domestic dwellings, High Sunderland, was commissioned by the textile designer, Bernat Klein, who saw Farnely Hey in the 1950s and promptly demanded to know who had built it. The house had a similar effect on its current custodians, designers Christian Harvey and Vicky Lynn Davies. Only the third owners to live at Farnley Hey, they had no intention of moving when they stumbled upon Womersley’s Grade II-listed design. “When we first visited the house, we didn’t want to leave,” Christian recalls. “The setting – with its woodland and views – blew us away.”

Christian and Vicky have lived in the house in much the same way as Womersley originally intended. “The house was designed a certain way and it still feels right to use it that way. The rooms work as they are,” says Christian. Built from a blend of Yorkshire stone, camphor wood and brick, the spacious property winds its way up to a crescendo of a view celebrated with a floor to ceiling window at the end of a cantilever. An extension was constructed in the 1960s – adding a garage and several bedrooms – which Womersley is rumoured to have seen and given the stamp of approval. Now, as Farnley Hey comes to market, the owners speak to us about the joy of everyday life in a Womersley designed home.

“Modern living at Farnley Hey is easy. The open plan layout flows as you move up through the different levels and there is not an area of the house we don’t use at different times. There’s no wasted space. The split levels create space for privacy, while the open plan layout makes the home social and interactive. If there is somebody up on the mezzanine – chatting away – while you are in the dining room, you won’t know what they are saying but you’re still essentially sharing the same space.

“It is also a contemplative house; it makes you sit and think because you are looking outside all the time and you see how the building works with nature. If you are in the garden and you’re looking at the house, you can see through the building: it’s at peace with what’s around it.

“Moving in, we kept much of the furniture from the previous owners and – apart from the removal of a greenhouse under the cantilever and the upgrade of a bathroom – we haven’t made any alterations. There are lots of original features, like the hooded ceiling lights, music unit and sprung floor in the main living space (known as the dancefloor).

“A good interior is functional but it should also intrigue. It should have interesting, well-designed elements, and at Farnley Hey those elements are already here. Our interior design choices are directed by the house. We haven’t tried to replicate something from the 1950s, but we are governed by the building. There was a lot of timber when we moved in, and we have given the space a new lightness, adding more colour, plants and artwork from the Hepworth Wakefield Print Fair. It is more contemporary than it was.

“There is not really a favourite spot in the house because we spend time everywhere. We really appreciate how the whole thing comes together as one big space. You can’t sit anywhere and not appreciate another part of it. You sit down in the dining room and you look up to the dancefloor and you go ‘that’s a good view’, and you sit up on the mezzanine and you look down and you think ‘that’s a good view’. It is a clever building because it opens up different aspects as you move around each of the five levels.

“The house transforms with the weather. For the first two weeks in May when the sun is setting over the far side of the house, you get amazing light coming through the spindles on the staircase which creates these lines running across the mezzanine carpet. And it is cosy at night – if it is dark, you close all the curtains and you feel enclosed.

“Because of the south facing garden, we often sit out the back in the sun. We spend a lot of time in the garden and when you go down into the woods beneath the house and look up it’s just amazing, the building comes towards you. I think the steepness of that slope was a conscious thing. If you look at modernism you rely on the setting, on the woodland or the natural surroundings – the land at the rear of Farnley Hey falls away into the woods, so the position of the house on the plot makes it all the more dramatic.

“Living here has been an amazing experience, because we might have dreamt of living in a mid-century house, but we never actually thought we would have the opportunity to. We’re moving because we feel the need to have a change. It is an intuitive thing that there is something else waiting for us, and it’s time to let somebody else appreciate the house. We are down to earth people living in an extraordinary house who have revelled in every moment, and if somebody else can get something like that out of it, all the better.”