Lake House, Wilsford

Lake House is an Elizabethan country house dating from 1578, in Wilsford cum Lake in Wiltshire, England, about 7 miles north of Salisbury. It is a Grade I listed building. The gardens are Grade II listed in the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

Lake House was built in 1578 for George Duke, a wealthy clothier, shortly after he acquired the manor of Lake. The house is built of Chilmark stone, the pale limestone from which Salisbury Cathedral was also built, and flint chequerwork: its treatment at Lake House has been described as "an outstanding example of this technique". The house has two storeys, with basement and attic areas; the stone mullion windows have transoms. It has gabled terracotta-tiled roofs and the chimneys are diagonally-set. Its west front faces the road and is symmetrical, forming a five-part pattern of central projecting porch, flanked on either side by recessed windows and then at each end by semi-octagonal bay windows. The projecting bay areas carry up the full height of the two storeys and are topped by crenallations. There are five small windowed gables at roof level. The Duke family shield is above the doorway.

It is thought that the original building was L-shaped, with the principal block facing west (as today) and the shorter block running eastwards behind its northern end. It has been suggested that this north wing may incorporate part of an earlier house. A parallel wing, which partly fills the internal angle of the L, is thought to have been built to accommodate a Georgian staircase in the late 18th century.

In 1897 the house left the possession of the Duke family for the first time in nine generations, when the widow of the Rev. Edward Duke (1814–95), who was an archaeologist and colleague of Richard Colt Hoare, sold the house. The buyer, Joseph Lovibond, had the house thoroughly restored under the direction of architect Detmar Blow working with the advice of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The work was considered "a showpiece of restoration at a time when methods of restoring were the subject of much controversy."

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