Modern Architecture, Heritage and Englishness

Abstract

In 1992 the National Trust launched a campaign to ‘Save 2 Willow Road’, a house in Hampstead built in 1938 by Erno Goldfinger for his own use (Fig. 1). Goldfinger, born in Budapest in 1902, studied in the cosmopolitan artistic milieu of Paris in the 1920s. It was there that he met his wife, the painter Ursula Blackwell. They moved to London in 1934 and, along with other architectural emigres or visitors helped introduce into Britain mainstream Modernist ideas from the Continent. Unlike most of the emigres, the Goldfingers stayed on, living in their Hampstead house. The campaign leaflet describes 2 Willow Road as ‘a remarkable survival’ because it is ‘still filled with the furniture [Goldfinger] designed for it and the contemporary paintings and sculpture he and his wife collected. . . . today it retains the atmosphere of Hampstead between the wars. . . ’ (Fig. 2) This period piece of a house, this ‘modern masterpiece’ was, the reader was informed, now ‘at risk’ because the contents of the interior might be sold off. The National Trust sought to raise money to buy the property to conserve its integrated and historical ambience.