A HOUSE at the Naze has recently been restored, refurbished and reborn as a Modernist art deco style residence that was part of a pre-Second World War trend in the 1930s.

The houses were of a striking linear flat roof design with rectangular metal framed windows and built with concrete rather than conventional bricks.

Another large house nearby sits on the corner of Green Lane and Cliff Parade and now used as a care home, having previously been owned by the Garton family.

The Modernist style was not to everyone’s taste at the time they emerged because they eschewed conventional pitched roof and tile design with their trademark square shape with discreet curves.

It is believed there were more houses like these two examples at the Naze, but after the war they had pitched roofs added probably due to the perennial problem afflicting flat roofs, which risked water ingress.

Frinton is one of the places where some of these houses remain, the most famous probably being the Round House. It is now Grade II listed along with another, Seaspan, 4 Audley Way.

In 1934, the South Coast Investment Company bought 200 acres of land straddling the railway line to the north-east of Frinton. They proposed an ambitious development, the Frinton Park Estate, which was to include 1,100 houses.

The 40 acres east of the railway line and closest to the sea was designated as a showcase for modernist houses, and Oliver Hill was chosen by the company as the principal architect.

Hill was insistent on the employment of a number of young, progressive architects, including Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry, Erich Mendelsohn and others. By the end of 1935, the project had however foundered.

Many of the architects had already withdrawn, and Hill resigned.

Ultimately, the scheme failed because of the conflict between the idealism of the architects and the need for profit, and because of the difficulty of selling experimental design to a suspicious and conservative public.

Only about 35 modernist houses and part of the shopping centre were built. Oliver Hill had designed 12 houses, of which ten survive.