Woodknowe, 40 Camphill Road, Broughty Ferry, Dundee

Woodknowe, 40 Camphill Road, Broughty Ferry, Dundee

Woodknowe is a two-storey villa with basement, designed by architects Charles and Leslie Ower and completed in 1894. It stands on falling ground and adopts a stolid L-plan form. The house is constructed of snecked rubble with stugging, dressed with polished red sandstone, and features half-timber and rendered work at the stair tower on the north elevation. The roof is slate, with corniced wallhead stacks rising through the eaves, some retaining original tapered cans. Shallow eaves and cast-iron rainwater goods and finials complete the external detail.

Windows are single, bipartite, and tripartite sash and case frames with plate-glass or two-pane lights at the bottom and multi-pane above. Leaded stained glass appears on the south elevation, though some top sashes have been replaced with plate-glass.

The south elevation centres on a keystoned and margined depressed-arch doorcase with an elaborate tripartite doorpiece, featuring pilaster door jambs, a two-leaf half-glazed door, plate-glass sidelights, and a large decorative fanlight. A prominent squat round tower at the left angle rises slightly above the wallhead with a finialled conical roof, with one window at ground floor on its east elevation. The right side features a round tower with a later window at basement level and two windows at ground floor, with a widely-spaced tripartite window at first floor on the angle. A bay at the left has windows at basement, ground, and first floor levels. Further left, a slightly advanced bay is treated as an angle tower with a finialled pyramidal roof rising from the main roof. A basement door is masked by a modern glazed porch, and a tripartite window sits at ground floor, with a slightly advanced bipartite window at first floor bearing a moulded cill and finialled half-piended dormerhead.

The west elevation features a slightly advanced blank section at the right with a prominent wallhead stack. A window at basement left is followed by paired windows at ground and first floors, then bipartite windows at both levels, and a bipartite window at ground floor far left. A single-storey lean-to extends at the outer left with one window.

The north elevation is dominated by a mannered half-timbered and rendered stair tower, flanked by angle towers with elongated windows and finialled conical roofs, advanced from a re-entrant centre rising from a further advanced ground floor service bay. A canted stair window at the centre has been later formed as a door at the lower part and is masked by a porch approached by a flight of steps. Additional doors and windows occupy the ground floor, with a sloping roof over the service bay entrance. A blank advanced gable with a sloping roof continued as a lean-to contains a gable stack breaking through the eaves. A recessed bay at the left has a bipartite window at ground floor and a single window at first floor.

The interior retains an encaustic tile floor in the vestibule, a tripartite vestibule screen with patterned etched glass, and some original shell-niche design cornices and decorative friezes on the ground floor. Chimneypieces have been removed, and the staircase, though intact, is sealed. An Art Deco gas fire of circa 1930s date occupies the hall. The first floor was not inspected during the survey.

The property is bounded by red ashlar gatepiers with pyramidal caps, and by round-coped rubble boundary walls adjoining to the north and south.

Woodknowe was originally built for the Misses Duncan. The house is now subdivided into two units. A small cave with a masonry and brick arch entrance survives in the garden on a slope to the south-west of the house.