现代之家 | 卡斯夫妇的乡村现代主义生活

As Jeannette, my wife, and I headed towards our seventies together, we knew it was time for a dramatic change. We wanted a new home in the country, and we wanted to create a project together that would not just occupy our time, but become our passion.

And in fact, what we found was a place that could make all of these dreams come true – a plot of land that could become both our home and our joint venture in ways we had never imagined.

It was 1990, and Jeannette and I had decided to consolidate our lives. Up to that point, we were happily scattered – a flat in London, a house in Spain, and a cottage in West Sussex. I was still on the board at Moss Bros., and would need to be in London a few times each week, so Spain was no use.

And as dear as London will always be to us, leaving the city was the whole point. We enjoyed our cottage in Kingston Gorse, just outside of Chichester – a city we also loved, with the cultural treasures of a place twice its size.

So we began looking around West Sussex for a plot of land to build on, since no existing house could possibly fit our strange and stringent requirements!

Our dream home needed to have a view towards the sea, but be high enough up to avoid any danger of flooding, and it would have plentiful grounds for me to walk.

Normally when you find such a choice plot in England, it is already crowned with a grand Georgian manor house – but that is certainly not what we wanted.

From a very early age I had adopted my parents love for Modernism and, in particular, Bauhaus design and architecture, and this is a love that Jeannette and I share.

The house we wanted would have to be thoroughly modern, full of functional minimalism and well supplied with windows.

And so, knowing that good, modern architecture is limited even in urban Britain, nonetheless the countryside, we assumed we’d have to build it ourselves.

To that end, we found a plot of beautiful land in the village of Patching, halfway between Brighton and Chichester, and made an offer despite the awful house that currently occupied the plot.

It was a weekend, and that coming Monday we were due to pay our first instalment on the offer. On Saturday, I left the Kingston Gorse cottage and went into Chichester where, for the first time in my six decades in this nation, I picked up a copy of Country Life magazine.

In that magazine, I saw an ad. Hathill Copse, Goodwood, Nr. Chichester, West Sussex was all the information it gave, along with three photographs of what I instantly recognised as a classic Bauhaus design, full of glorious windows and surrounded by countryside. This was surely the place for us, and it was ready and waiting.

The next day we sped out to Goodwood, asking for Hathill Copse – which no one seemed to have heard of. We eventually arrived to discover the previous owners housekeeper still living there.

That day, with its mad chase around the Sussex countryside, is something of a blur to me. But the housekeeper later reminisced to us that Jeannette and I barely looked at the house, but instead walked around pointing to where we would hang each of our pictures.

Mr Kearleys housekeeper told us that there was a man interested in the house, not for itself, but because he was convinced there was oil in the grounds – which I think there probably is! – and that he had given the estate agent a sum to stop showing the house for a while.

The housekeeper was upset because this mans plan was to pave the front into a huge drive, destroying everything. But we quickly learnt that this small, unofficial exchange of hush money was the only deal that had transpired with the buyer; there was no contract at all.

That Monday, we made a bid, got out of the Patching deal, and, soon thereafter, Hathill Copse was ours.

Perhaps its the 20/20 vision you get while looking over your own history, but I think that, rather than stumbling upon this glorious house, Hathill Copse found us.

Jeannette and I both thought we were heading into retirement. But neither of us is the type to take retirement lying down, so to speak. When I think back on it, we werent just looking for a new house; we were looking for the next phase of our lives.

Hathill Copse sits at the north-eastern edge of the Goodwood Estate, seat of the Dukes of Richmond and, perhaps more famously these days, home of Goodwood Racecourse and the Festival of Speed.

Our predecessor at