Cottage, West Side Dunnet

A mid to late 19th century crofthouse and its ancillary buildings form a traditional longhouse type L-plan complex near Thurso. The site is also known as Mary Ann's Cottage, after its last owner and occupier, and now operates as a museum open to the public.

The three-bay, single-storey crofthouse sits at the centre with whitewashed rubble walls, end chimneystacks, and a Caithness slate roof. The main east elevation has a central door and eight-pane sash and case windows. A lean-to extension was added around 1960 to provide a kitchen and water closet.

Adjoining outbuildings step down on either side. To the north are a store, workshop and hen house or "little barn" with corrugated metal roofs and skylights. To the south are a byre and stable, each with two door openings and corrugated metal roofs; the rear or stable section was partially rebuilt in blockwork. A cart shed and turnip store abut to the south, roofed with very large Caithness flags. A threshing barn added in 1905 abuts to the south at right angles, with a Caithness slate roof, a tiny window to the south elevation and a larger attic window to the west gable.

A detached thatched pig house stands to the rear or west, thatched in marram grass with a small yard formed by upright Caithness flags. The kailyard is detached to the immediate east of the crofthouse and stable, built with low drystone walls and upright Caithness flags to the north. A rubble and slate milkhouse is integrated into the southwest corner of the kailyard, along with a peat neuk and a former duckhouse (later kennel), both with walls and roofs formed from Caithness flags.

The crofthouse interior comprises an entrance corridor, a bedroom to the south, and a kitchen to the north which provides access to a further bedroom behind the entrance corridor and the later lean-to. The interior is maintained as a museum displaying 19th and early 20th century household artefacts and furnishings. Features include v-boarded panelling to the walls, two box beds, a chimney piece with an open hearth and cooking equipment. The outbuildings, largely floored and roofed with Caithness flags with 20th century roof structures, display various agricultural objects. Stone slab trevisses (partitions) and troughs remain in the byre; timber stall dividers are in the stable. The milk house has shelving units made from Caithness flags.

A flagstone-paved close runs along the front of the house with a drainage channel leading to a drain in front of the barn door.

This is a well-preserved example of a traditional croft complex. Such vernacular buildings were once prolific across the Highlands and Islands, but those surviving substantially unaltered are rare. West Side Cottage demonstrates regional traditional building methods and materials whilst retaining a significant proportion of historic fabric, 19th century footprint, vernacular form, character and setting. The retention and grouping of the crofthouse with its various ancillary structures is of special interest, particularly the thatched pig house.

The pig house is one of only around 40 buildings or groups of buildings in the Highlands known to retain an intact thatched roof. A 2016 survey of thatched buildings in Scotland by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings found only around 200 buildings of this type remaining in Scotland, with most found in small rural communities. Thatched buildings often display distinctive local and regional building methods and materials. Those that survive are important in understanding traditional building skills and an earlier way of life.