Capel Manor House

Capel Manor House is a house in Horsmonden, Kent, England. A simple glass-and-steel house in the style of Mies van der Rohe, it is seen as one of the most important examples of modern architecture in Great Britain, a masterpiece of the genre and Britain's answer to the Barcelona Pavilion. In September, 2013, English Heritage and Britain's Minister of Culture, Ed Vaizey, listed the house at Grade II*, joining just 5.5% of all listed buildings It became one of only 0.18% of post-war buildings to be listed. It is now seen as one of Britain's finest postwar houses.Designed by the British architect Michael Manser and completed in 1971, the house was commissioned by John Howard, private personal secretary to Prime Minister Edward Heath, who wanted a modern labour-saving house to replace the existing 26-bedroom mansion. Writing in the Financial Times, Edwin Heathcote described Manser's contribution thus: "Manser's own designs for houses, dozens of works of great modernist clarity throughout south-east England, showed what was possible – how modernism could be integrated into a seemingly resistant English landscape. His Capel Manor House is exquisite, a crystalline glass box atop the ruined podium of an old Victorian manor house."Jane Austen’s forebears once lived on the same spot, near Sissinghurst in the Kentish Weald, as did her descendant Frederick Austen, who owned a 26-bedroom house built in the 19th century in the Italianate Gothic style. The grand country home is thought not to have been lived in after being occupied by an army unit during the Second World War, and was demolished in 1969 and a 2,000 sq ft steel and entirely glass-fronted house, intended as a weekend bolthole, shot up, phoenix-like, from the rubble-strewn site.

Tags: Landmark & Historical Place