Ashwicken Lakes Masterplan

We are working with Norfolk Farm Leisure Limited to transform Ashwicken Lake in East Anglia into a one-of-a-kind eco-wellness resort that celebrates waterside living and sustainable design. Once a restored quarry lake, the 80-hectare site will be reimagined as a tranquil destination for wellness, recreation and community, a place where architecture and nature exist in perfect balance.

This private investment will create a new kind of resort experience, where lakeside lodges, holiday villas, treehouses and apartments gather around a new Clubhouse and Spa within a landscape of wellbeing and ecological diversity. Designed around the principles of sustainable architecture and flood-resilient masterplanning, Ashwicken Lakes will offer both visitors and locals a chance to reconnect with nature through water-based pursuits, wellness activities and year-round leisure.

Our masterplan arranges the accommodation in clusters around the water, interspersed with new planting and trees to create distinct areas of character across the resort. Most guests will stay in single-storey lodges of one, two and three bedrooms to the north and north-east, with larger two-storey holiday villas to the west and north-west. Treehouses sit within the woodland to the north of the site, and self-catering lakeside apartments have private balconies overlooking the water.

At the heart of the resort is the Clubhouse and Spa, the main focus for guests and visitors. Predominantly single storey, with a taller folly-like element that acts as a wayfinder across the site, it brings together a spa, café and restaurant, a lakeside swimming pool and terraces for alfresco waterside dining, all open to the local community as well as to guests.

On the water, guests can row, kayak, paddleboard, swim and scuba dive, supported by a boathouse on the southern lake with boat storage, changing facilities, wetsuit rental, bicycle hire and a slipway. On land, tennis, ball games, a children’s play area and archery sit within the landscaped southern peninsula, and guests are encouraged to move around the resort on foot, by bike, by electric buggy or by electric water taxi.

The Clubhouse takes a fabric-first approach and is intended to achieve BREEAM ‘Very Good’, while the treehouses use prefabricated construction and minimal foundations to keep a small footprint in the woodland. Air- or water-source heat pumps, electric vehicle charging, electric site vehicles and an electric water taxi form part of a wider low-energy strategy for the resort.

The landscape is integral to the proposal. Native tree and shrub planting, reedbeds and marginal planting, wildflower meadow, species-rich grassland, rain gardens and swales create a varied landscape, with reptile refugia, bug hotels and nesting and roosting boxes adding habitat, all backed by long-term management so the benefits for biodiversity are maintained. Ashwicken Lakes represents more than a holiday destination: it is a new model for eco-conscious tourism and sustainable design in the UK.