This house was built for James Hogg MacPherson and his family who arrived in the district in 1870. The MacPhersons were Irish, from County Derry, and had been living in Auckland for a number of years before moving to Canterbury. The house has remained in the ownership of the McPherson family (the spelling of the family's name changed around 1916) since then, although it has been leased to other people for many years.

Lakeside House is interesting in that its decorative elements are Carpenter Gothic in style, but the house is built in concrete, an unusual combination. The house has a first-storey balcony, steep gabled roofs and the decorated barge boards, (described as being of 'virile design' by J.A. Hendry), all of which are typical of the Carpenter Gothic style.

Carpenter Gothic arose from the nineteenth century Gothic revival which had stimulated an interest in the use of gables and decorated barge boards. It became a popular style for wooden houses built in New England during the nineteenth century and the popularisation of Carpenter Gothic was helped by the invention of the steam powered scroll saw, which made the cutting out of the elaborate bargeboards less laborious. Pattern books, such as those written by Andrew Jackson Downing in 1842 and 1850, also helped to spread the style. Generally the American Carpenter Gothic houses were constructed from timber. However, there were a few built in stone with decorative timber barge boards. In New Zealand the earliest Carpenter Gothic houses were a group in Nelson, designed by a local architect, William Beatson and some of these were constructed in cob. By 1860 there were a number of good houses in this style in New Zealand; Highwic, in Auckland, being one of the best-known New Zealand examples of Carpernter Gothic.

Lakeside House is significant for its unusual concrete construction and Carpenter Gothic trimmings. The long association of the McPherson family with the property is also of local interest.