Capel Manor House is a small modern steel-framed private house in

Horsmonden Horsmonden ( ) is a village in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. The village is located in the Weald of Kent. It is situated on a road leading from Maidstone to Lamberhurst, three miles north of the latter place. The nearest railw ...

, in

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

in southern England. It was designed by

Michael Manser Michael Manser (23 March 1929 – 8 June 2016) was a British architect. He was a president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and established his own successful architecture practice in 1961. Education and career Born in Bristo ...

for

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. His eleven-year tenure as prime min ...

, a former Member of Parliament. It was built between 1969 and 1970. The house was constructed on the site of, and within the remains of, Capel House, an earlier mansion built by

Thomas Henry Wyatt Thomas Henry Wyatt (9 May 1807 – 5 August 1880) was an Anglo-Irish architect. He had a prolific and distinguished career, being elected president of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1870–1873 and being awarded its Royal Gold Me ...

in Italian Gothic style in the mid-nineteenth century and demolished in the 1960s. The architectural writer John Newman describes the Manser house as "a severe Miesian pavilion". The

colonnades In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...

of Wyatt's

winter garden A winter garden is a kind of garden maintained in wintertime. History The origin of the winter garden dates back to the 17th to 19th centuries where European nobility constructed large conservatories that housed tropical and subtropical pla ...

now enclose a swimming pool. The house is an important example of

modern architecture Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, or the modern movement, is an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architectur ...

in Britain, and in 2013 was designated a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

References

Further reading