Buildings of any age can find themselves at risk. As a building designed by a living architect, Anderton House was a new departure for us when we acquired it in 2000. We chose it for all the reasons we usually apply to older buildings. For all its modernity, Anderton House is as much at home in the rolling Devon landscape it overlooks as the longhouses which inspired its profile. It is an exceptional example of uncompromisingly modern design executed in simple materials, happily caught before changing tastes had been allowed to blur its clean lines or site drainage problems to damage its fabric. It is listed Grade II*.

The Anderton family commissioned the house from Peter Aldington in 1969. It is instantly evocative of those days, with a nod to Frank Lloyd Wright in the functional treatment of the bedrooms and for Peter Aldington, ‘perhaps the nearest we came to an integration of inside and outside spaces’, the ultimate aim of pioneer modern architects.

The roof appears to float cleverly over the spacious open plan living area with its sliding glass walls. The house retains all its contemporary materials and detailing and is furnished to match. Here is a comfortable family home lifted to a different level of experience by the mind of an architect who is a master of his chosen idiom. Revisiting this more recent past is to be highly recommended.

View our history sheet for this Landmark.  

Sleeps: 5