Willow Road

This Bond villain’s lair is a pre-WWII time capsule of modernist design

Number 2 is the central of three houses built by the Hungarian-born architect Ernő Goldfinger in 1939. Today it is the only one of the trio open to the public and rightly held up as an exemplary piece of modernist architecture, created as a family home for his wife Ursula and children.

Goldfinger’s innovative approach met with much resistance throughout his career. The James Bond author Ian Fleming famously objected to the demolition of the houses that made way for Goldfinger’s Willow Road development and exacted his revenge by naming a Bond villain after the architect. In National Trust care since Ursula’s death in 1995, the house is something of a time capsule with the kitchen still stocked with vintage foods and papers strewn across the architect’s desk.