This seven-bedroom house in Chelsea built in 1956 has been owned by just two families and still has all its original features.
Number 12 Cathcart Road was designed for Major and Mrs Anne by the architects Wallis, Gilbert and Partners — the same practice behind the iconic Art Deco Hoover Building in Ealing and the Victoria Coach Station.
They sold the house to another family in the Sixties, and three generations have lived there, until it was put on the market this year with Savills for £8 million.
Current owner Davina remembers first viewing the house with her parents in 1964, when she was just two years old.
"They took me along with them and the owner took a real liking to me and let them have it at a lower price than they were asking, which I don't know I'm afraid because I was two," Davina tells Homes & Property.
"Because I was so sweet, they wanted us to live in their family home. My parents always told me I was in charge of getting the house."
Original owners Major and Mrs Anne had the house designed as a four-bed, and later added a two-bedroom flat with its own kitchen and entrance over the double garage for their son to live in. However, their plan did not work out.
"The son took one look at it and said 'I don't want to live with my parents' and moved away as possible. In which case they lost heart, sold it to my parents and moved after him," says Davina.
"So it's only had them and us as owners over the past 70 years."
Davina's family redecorated, but made few alterations to the house's original features including the fabulous now-retro kitchen with cherry-red drawers, and the built-in sideboard and room divider with oak veneer in its large open plan living area.
"My parents really didn't believe in changing anything very much," says Davina.
In a testament to the quality of the original design, the kitchen is still entirely functional.
"It's still going strong. I think it's bizarre that it was so well-made in those days that nothing needed replacing."
Its modern, open plan layout was ideally suited to family life.
"It was a wonderful house. Unlike all the all the local houses that had the children's bedrooms in the attic and it was epic to get up to the top floor, everything was on two floors, so it was very friendly," she says.
"You didn't need a baby alarm in our house. If I was crying in my room my mother could hear me from the living room. If my parents had a dinner party we could hear it. We felt very involved."
The family did eventually convert a second floor balcony into an extra bedroom and bathroom when Davina's sister arrived, and added a ground floor extension as a playroom for the children.
Davina also remembers playing in the unusually large garden for the area.
"It was extraordinary, the biggest garden in Chelsea I would say," says Davina.
"As kids that was just heaven. Everybody else had these tiny letter box gardens, so they would all come round to ours."
The big garden was one of the reasons that Davina's mother lived in the house for so long.
"She was a very keen gardener. Even when she couldn't walk very much and had a gardener, she loved sitting out there and pulling out the odd weed."
The garden is so large because the house and grounds were built over three plots in London's post war period. Major and Mrs Anne replaced their existing home with a more modern design, buying the ends of other gardens to complete the new plot.
When complete, the house's midcentury design with an open floor plan and flying staircase so groundbreaking that it was featured in the March 1959 edition of Better Homes and Gardens.
"The old house, with its long flight of stairs and three bathrooms echoed the days of ample domestic staff," Jessica Young wrote in the magazine.
"The owner's first requirement for the new home was that it should be labour-saving, with an easy-to-clean staircase."
Said flying staircase is still in situ, and Davina recalls that its steps were ideal for both grandchildren and elderly grandparents to get up and down.
Dan Carrington, head of Savills Chelsea, said the house was an "extremely rare" find.
"In two decades of estate agency, I have never come across a property that offers as much scope and opportunity as Cathcart Road," said Carrington. "This is a one-of-a-kind sale of an architect designed home in one of the most desirable streets in Chelsea."
As for Davina, she hopes that the house finds loving owners to refurbish it and take it on.
"What I would love," she says, "is for another family to move in there, because it is such a lovely family home, but to make it their own."
