Woodlake (formerly Lowicks House) including garden features

Woodlake, formerly Lowicks House, is a detached house designed by Charles FA Voysey and built in 1894 for Emslie J Horniman. Voysey extended and altered the building in 1898, 1904, 1907, 1911 and 1916, with additional later 20th-century modifications.

The house is constructed with whitewashed roughcast walls, Westmorland graduated slate roofs, timber window frames and casements, and wrought iron architectural elements including eaves and canopy brackets, window and door furniture. Built-in joinery is of timber. The building is L-shaped in plan, with the living area orientated south-east and a service wing to the north-west.

Externally, Woodlake is a two-storey building with attic, featuring battered coupled corner buttresses and large chimneys—one battered, one rectangular. The tall hipped roof has deeply projecting, sprocketed eaves carried away from the walls on thin iron brackets with scrolled ends. Horizontal bands of multi-paned casement windows pierce the eaves and white wall surfaces. Many casements have graduated panes of glass with miniature hinged opening lights within metal frames, heart-shaped fixings and long iron internal stays.

The north-west entrance elevation is articulated by a large central half-timbered dormer with a 5-light casement window surmounted by a half-hipped roof. The timber corner posts extend below to form the mullions of a first-floor through-eaves dormer, which has been enlarged by two lights to the south-west. Below sits a half-glazed front door flanked by small casement windows and protected by a flat canopy secured by decorative scrolled ironwork. The door bears a copper repoussé 'Lowicks' nameplate. An iron boot scraper stands beside the door. A projecting single-storey square bay occupies the western end. Ground floor features are unified by a continuous drip course. A projecting single and two-storey service wing extends from the north end.

The south-east garden elevation features a full-width flat-roofed ground floor projection comprising a late 20th-century enclosed veranda with multi-pane windows and doors to the west, a central late 19th-century projecting bay with casement windows, and an early 20th-century loggia supported on three columns to the east, with a late 20th-century glazed door behind it. The roof slope above is punctuated by three flat-roofed horizontal-style dormers aligned with the eaves line. A massive battered ridge stack rises to the north-east.

The south-west elevation is articulated by a single-storey polygonal bay window at the south end with a late 20th-century casement window adjacent. On the first floor are two late 20th-century 4-light dormers set below the eaves, with a central flat-roofed 5-light dormer above, surmounted by a tall rectangular chimneystack.

The north-east elevation shows two ground floor casement windows under a continuous drip moulding on the hipped end of the original 1894 main house. A 6-light horizontal-style dormer sits on the first floor aligned with the eaves line, with a small 3-light dormer above. The early 20th-century service range to the north-west has a half-glazed entrance door in an arched porch recess beneath a small triangular dormer and a late 20th-century box-style dormer. The range terminates in a two-storied gable end with a tall chimney. A single-storey conservatory with connecting link stands at the east end.

Internally, the north-west entrance leads into a small functional hall. The stair rises from the entrance hall around narrow screen-like balustrades with scallop-profiled handrails and tall newel posts. The entrance hall is now open to the formerly separate living hall, which features a corner brick fireplace (now painted), exposed ceiling joists, and a projecting south-east oriented bay designed as a window seat. Both halls have quarry tile flooring and late 20th-century wooden-style panelling.

The sitting room extends into a polygonal bow window facing south-west. Notable features include a columned fireplace flanked by integral bookshelves and cupboards, with a built-in writing desk with unusually profiled legs to the left. The cupboards have pendant-shaped knobs and the casements feature long scrolled iron stays. The walls are simply timber-panelled. The playroom behind has a large square window bay to the north-west and exposed ceiling joists. It contains a fireplace with fitted glass-fronted cupboards either side, again with pendant knobs. The corbel below the mantel shelf is carved as a face in profile, purportedly Voysey's.

Throughout the house are several panelled built-in cupboards with ventilation in the form of cut-out heart motifs and ironmongery including pendant-shaped knobs. A number of boarded and half-glazed doors survive with iron door furniture comprising latches and large strap-hinges terminating in hearts. A speaking tube is located on the first-floor landing, and bell buttons are extant at various points. The attic space is lined with scarf-jointed close-boarding.

The building line of the south-east elevation extends as a tall white roughcast wall with tile coping and square piers. It contains a semi-circular headed opening with a wooden gate and a series of late 20th-century glazed pairs of doors. A lower long roughcast garden wall returns to the south-east with battered buttresses and three semi-circular openings with hood moulds over, containing gates with strap hinges terminating in heart motifs. The wall stands 6 feet high at the northern end and 10 feet high at the southern end as the ground drops away.

Within the grounds to the south stands a summer house with a swept pyramidal roof and ornamental weathervane in the shape of a sailing boat. South-east of the garden front, a copper sundial on the lawn features a gnomon fashioned into a grotesque caricature. Beyond this are three steps leading to a brick-piered pergola and a wooden bridge, which crosses onto an island on the lake.