Peter Womersley’s High Sunderland house goes on sale for first time

The 1957-built house in Selkirk, the Scottish Borders, known as High Sunderland, was commissioned by Serbian textile designer Bernat Klein and includes four bedrooms, kitchen, living room and dining area. It also features a later studio wing, which was added in 1982, but was not designed by Wormersley. 

The single-storey house, which uses a timber frame and rectangular plan, was put on sale by the Klein family and is listed on The Modern House website.

The interior includes textiles designed and woven by Klein himself. 

Historic Environment Scotland describes the house as a ‘forerunner’ to Ernő Goldfinger’s Grade II*-listed Benjamins Mount (1967), which, like High Sunderland, features a flat-roofed open plan design.

It sits next to the two-storey Bernat Klein Studio, also designed by Womersley in the 1950s, which won an RIBA award in 1973 for its design and material combination of concrete, brick, steel and glass. 

Born in 1923, Womersley studied architecture at the Architectural Association and later moved to the Scottish Borders where he set up his own studio in Gattonside. He died in 1993.

Other notable buildings designed by Womersley, who was influenced by the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, include the Catergory A-listed Fairydean Stadium (1963), the University of Hull Sports Centre (1965), and the Roxburgh County Buildings (1966), which is now used as the headquarters of the Scottish Borders Council.