This house, known as ‘Pollard’ at the time of construction in 1932, was widely published and admired when it was first seen. The shock of the new was not quite as strong as it had been with the unveiling Connell’s previous house, the spectacular High & Over in Amersham (sold by The Modern House in 2011), but it still provoked a passionate reaction.

Typical of the coverage was this commentary by Raymond McGrath in his popular book ‘Twentieth Century Houses’ published by Faber & Faber in 1934:

“Viewed from the air, viewed from any angle some judges say, Pollard is more like an invention by Picasso than a house. However if there is any sense – and there certainly is – in Corbusier’s argument that ‘the plan is the first cause; without a plan there is no order, no law’, then there is much to be said for the direction the architect has taken in his design. It is a plan full of thought, not limited by the old ideas of balance.”

Today the house is still extensively written about and discussed. In their book, ‘Connell, Ward & Lucas’, Dennis Sharp and Sally Rendel have written that “Connell’s work did not sing in such an exuberant way” as it did with this house.

Sharp and Rendel also point out that whilst the black and white photographs from the 1930s suggest that the house was always white, it was in fact “blush pink set against leaf green windows”. The windows are, of course, a great feature of the house which is why the celebrated window company, Crittall, used an image of it for one of their widely-spread adverts, as can be seen above.

It is interesting to note that the house was designed for an accountant in his seventies, not the type of client you would expect to commission a radical young architect. Sir Arthur Lowes Dickinson was something of a radical himself, however, as it was he that led the way in abolishing what were then opaque accountancy practises of large corporations and developing consolidated accounting. He was also the son of a well-known Victorian painter, Lowes Cato Dickinson, and his grandfather is said to have discovered Charlotte Bronte. He was not therefore, a typical accountant, and it is no surprise that he admired the artistry of Connell’s exuberant architecture.