'I wanted doors I could slam': Growing up in a see-through house

A view of High Sunderland through the birch trees

As a child, Shelley Klein envied her friends' more traditional homes.

She grew up in a "see-through" house in the Scottish Borders, designed by leading modernist architect Peter Womersley.

Her father was influential designer Bernat Klein, and their home regularly hosted catwalk shows for fashion editors who were flown up from London.

"It was lovely, but I don't think as a child I kind of recognised that it was not the norm, it was just home," Shelley said.

Shelley Klein has written a book about the experience

"Friends loved the house... but I don't remember it being exceptional.

"I know I was far more jealous of them living in their more traditional houses."

Shelley has now written a book about living in High Sunderland, near Selkirk.

The building - which has been A-listed by Historic Environment Scotland - has been described as a "signature work" of Peter Womersley.

The Borders-based architect designed the geometric modular building in the late 1950s.

'I wanted doors I could slam'

Shelley said the thought of the house as being "beautiful and fun" when she was a little girl - but things changed as she got older.

"As a teenager I wanted doors that I could slam, and also just places that you could go and hide and be by yourself," she explained.

"In a very open-planned glass house, that's not so easy.

"I didn't have a bedroom door until I was about 13 - when I demanded that my dad put one in because I did want some privacy."

Shelley Klein has many happy memories of her childhood in the house

She said the design, while beautiful, was not always easy to live with.

"It does have its problems when you don't feel quite as private from the outside world," she said.

"It was more the idea that people could look in, even though we weren't overlooked or anything, but people would suddenly appear at the window.

"As a very little child I think I got quite scared about people looking in at night."

The journey of her father, Bernat Klein, to the Borders was a long one. He was born in what was then Yugoslavia, lost his mother at Auschwitz and came to study textiles at Leeds University in 1945.

Bernat Klein lived in the house until his death in 2014

He eventually ended up working in Edinburgh before being transferred to southern Scotland, which was initially "a bit of a shock".

But he and his wife Margaret, who was known as Peggy, came to love the area and chose it as the location for their unique home.

The property was also at the heart of the fashion industry, as Mr Klein worked with the likes of Chanel, Dior, Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent.

"We used to have fashion shows in the house," recalled Shelley.

"All the fashion editors would be flown up from London and we'd have catwalk shows in the house and things, which was great fun."

Images for Bernat Klein's catalogue were taken at High Sunderland

However, as a child Shelley was more interested in friends who came from a farming background than she was in clothes.

She left the Borders in her late teens and worked in publishing in London, before living in Cornwall.

She returned to Scotland to look after her father following her mother's death in 2008.

"I was in my 50s and that was quite difficult because he was very purist about what could and couldn't come into the house," she said.

"I had a lot of Victorian furniture which he threw his hands up in horror at.

"So we had our little battles in later life with me looking after him."

She described it as a good relationship, if occasionally fiery.

"We both gave as good as we got," she said.

"He was very single-minded when it came to how things looked and it made him very uncomfortable if things didn't look right.

"His immediate environment was very important to him but he was an incredibly generous, funny man - and then also very difficult because of this single-minded vision."

Shelley said there was one trait in particular she had not inherited.

Ms Klein said having to sell High Sunderland after her father's death was "heartbreaking"

"I am not the most neat person and he was fastidiously tidy, so living with me was quite difficult for him in his house because I do seem to leave trails of destruction behind me wherever I go," she said.

"He found it very difficult - we both had to learn patience.

"He would drive me insane tidying up immediately after me if I was cooking or something. I would turn round and the thing I was looking for was gone."

When her father died in 2014, the family realised the house was too big for Ms Klein to stay in alone and, eventually, decided to part company with their "see-through" home.

"It took me about three-and-a-half years to build up the courage to put it on the market and saying goodbye to it was heart-breaking, I can't put it any other way," said Shelley.

"But we have found some wonderful people who have bought it, hopefully they are enjoying it as much as we did."

The See-Through House will be read by Barbara Flynn for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week between 18 and 22 May.