Overshot

Overshot is a private house built in 1937 by architects Godfrey Samuel and Valentine Harding for the art historian Ellis Waterhouse. A book stack was added around 1960 to 1965.

The building is constructed in light red brick, clad in cedar weatherboarding on the south elevation facing the garden. It has a low-pitched copper roof with deep eaves and end stacks, and features steel columns in the hallway for additional support. The plan is L-shaped, with two storeys. The principal rooms occupy a four-bay main range, with a later timber-constructed book stack positioned over a double garage that has stores to the rear and adjoining service rooms in a wing.

The architecture expresses modernist principles whilst employing traditional materials rather than the exposed reinforced concrete and flat roofs characteristic of earlier modern movement work. The south elevation has sliding timber windows and a balcony serving the first-floor morning room, which opens onto a set-back loggia beneath. The north entrance elevation showcases the modernist aesthetic through its large, geometric square-paned hall window adjacent to an inset timber door with glazed surrounds, all emphasised by the steel columns—a deliberate modernist statement. Strip windows light the corridor above, and the garage has timber doors.

The interior is distinguished by unusually coherent and high-quality joinery throughout. Oak floors are used extensively, except in the former maid's room which has pine. The hall features a built-in window seat. The library was the principal room, furnished with shelving, built-in drawers and fireplace. The dining room connects to the kitchen via a sliding door, hatch and cupboards, including a two-way cutlery drawer. The kitchen was originally separate from the pantry but these spaces are now united; a walk-in larder survives with ventilation openings in the exterior brickwork, and built-in cupboards remain. A staircase with metal balustrade serves the first floor. The first-floor sitting room has a balcony, fireplace and fitted oak bookshelves with a sliding door to an adjoining bedroom, which also has a bookcase and fitted cupboards. Bathrooms are tiled. The corridor extends into the added book stack via a groin vault, entirely filled with bookcases.

Godfrey Samuel and Valentine Harding were founding members of Tecton, working with Berthold Lubetkin from 1933 before establishing their own practice in 1936. Overshot exemplifies the architectural shift that emerged in Britain around 1936 to 1937, when modernist designers including F R S Yorke and Mary Crowley began moving away from exposed reinforced concrete towards simpler elevations and functional planning executed in traditional materials better suited to the British climate. As the architect Anthony Chitty, a former Tecton member, later wrote, the practice recognised that modern construction and finishes required greater maintenance against weather and decay than traditional materials and thus represented poor value. By 1936, these architects felt their work too austere and unfinished, seeking enrichment through colour, shadow, modulation and applied ornament. The house offered a model for 1950s design and was widely imitated in the decade following its construction. The commission also reflects the intellectual currents of the 1930s—that an eminent art historian specialising in Baroque architecture would choose to build in the modern style from two of the most fashionable young architects of the period. The building remains remarkably little altered beyond the addition of the book stack.