6, Borgie

6 Borgie is a single-storey house with an attic, built in 1920–1 as veteran's housing. The building is rectangular in plan with a lean-to outshot to the rear (north) elevation. It is constructed of rubble masonry with tooled rubble dressings. The pitched roof is slated with coped end stacks. A pair of gabled weatherboarded dormers breaks the eaves on the main (south) elevation. The north (rear) elevation features a gable with an engaged coped wallhead stack and a replacement tiled roof to the outshot. All doors and windows are timber replacements installed around 2001.

The house is located to the east of Tongue, south of Borgie Lodge Hotel, positioned between the Borgie to Skerray road and the River Borgie. It stands in its own garden enclosed by a rubble stone boundary wall. Modern chicken sheds, a garage, and a large modern agricultural building (constructed 1998) are situated to the east. Five further houses of similar date and style stand to the northwest, all south-facing and lining the east side of the Borgie to Skerray road.

The property first appears on the Ordnance Survey One-inch 'Popular' edition map of 1930. It was one of nine crofts built in 1920–1, with six located in this immediate area east of the main road. Borgie Estate was owned by the dukes of Sutherland and centred on a 19th-century shooting lodge, now Borgie Lodge Hotel. In 1914, the 5th Duke of Sutherland advertised the estate—12,000 acres of sheep farming land—for sale following his father's death. Finding no buyers, the estate was gifted to the Crown in 1916 for settlement by soldiers and sailors who had volunteered for First World War service. The first occupant of 6 Borgie was John George Mackay, from the local Clan Mackay. The Duke reserved fishing rights and the right to select soldier-tenants.

Each family received a small holding comprising a house and steading, with employment offered in new tree plantations on the estate. Houses contained four rooms plus kitchen, scullery, larder, and washhouse, completed by July 1921. Borgie Estate settlement formed an early part of the British Government's post-First World War afforestation policy, aimed at creating a strategic domestic timber supply. In 1919, Borgie was the first Highland area handed to the newly established Forestry Commission. Borgie Forest, located southwest of the smallholdings across the river, had 133,000 hectares of woodland planted by 1980.

The house exterior appears largely unaltered except for door and window replacement. The former steading, originally sited where the present chicken sheds stand, was demolished between listing in 1987 and first Google imagery in 2009.