2 Willow Rd

Bettany takes a tour of 2 Willow Road in Hampstead with National Trust volunteer John Escolme. The house was built by Hungarian architect Ernö Goldfinger both as family home and manifesto of his Modernist ideals. Goldfinger is famous for designing Trellick Tower in West London to solve the post-war housing crisis. Despite its nadir in the 1970s when Trellick became known as ‘the tower of terror’, it’s now something of a cultural icon, although Erno never lived to see its rehabilitation.

Bettany explores the way this remarkable tweed-wearing émigré brought the Bauhaus to Britain with Goldfinger’s biographer Nigel Warburton, and how at 2 Willow Rd, he paid homage to our Georgian architectural tradition in what is now considered to be a Modernist masterpiece.

For more information about 2 Willow Rd, including opening times and dates, go to: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/2-willow-road