Walled Garden, Wester Highgate And Highgate House

Wester Highgate Farm and Highgate House comprise two adjoining dwellings of different dates, forming an L-plan farm complex with ancillary buildings and a walled garden. The earlier house is dated 1757 (inscribed lintel reading 'TB MJ'), and the later addition dates to 1818 (dated stone above the entrance inscribed 'RB MS'). The initials are those of Thomas and Robert Biggart and their wives.

The earlier farmhouse is a 2-storey, 3-bay structure built of coursed sandstone with ashlar margins and an eaves cornice. It has enlarged ground-floor window openings, three small first-floor windows, and a roll-moulded surround to the central door. An inscribed lintel appears below the outer left first-floor window.

The later addition to the left is a 2-storey, 3-bay house of greater height and refinement, built of coursed whinstone rubble with raised sandstone ashlar margins (painted), angle margins, eaves course and cornice. It features a central timber-panelled door set in a panelled pilastered architrave with quatrefoil decoration in the frieze, a cornice above, and an inscribed panel. Two windows have been inserted to the ground floor, and a rubble segmental arch at the left links the house to a small cartshed.

The rear elevation of the earlier house is low and single-storey, with a twentieth-century box dormer added. The later house has a door to the outer left, altered ground-floor openings, and two first-floor windows, all finished in harl-pointed sandstone rubble.

The interior of the later house retains good original woodwork. The dining room features a buffet niche with scalloped-edged shelves (doors now missing), a cupboard below, and flanking two-leaf doors to former bed closets with reeded architraves. The former first-floor drawing room contains original unpainted timber doors—five in total—with broad reeded architraves and corner roundels, each displaying eight bead-moulded fields with central vertical moulding. Two-leaf doors access former bed closets. The house is arranged in a single room depth with bed closets on the rear wall and a steep central stair. A kitchen or parlour area on one side of the stair provides access to the rear and walled garden. A narrow upper-floor corridor gives access to the former drawing room, which is distinguished by its superior quality doors and architraves.

The windows throughout are now UPVC (the later house originally had 12-pane timber sash and case glazing; the first floor of the earlier house retains 2-pane sash and case windows of late nineteenth or early twentieth-century date). The roofs are covered with grey slate and feature stone ridges. The later house has straight stone skews; both have corniced ashlar end and ridge stacks with moulded octagonal clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods are present.

The cartshed, positioned at right angles to the main house, features a segmental arch in the gable and a small opening above, with grey slate roofing and a stone ridge.

The ancillary range consists of a linear single-storey and attic structure containing a byre, a former threshing barn, and stables (or former barn), apparently built in three phases with later brick lean-to extensions. The byre retains original stone trevises and fireclay troughs (probably later additions). The barn at the north end has scrolled skewputs and straight skews to the gable, dating to approximately 1759. According to map evidence, a circular horse-engine house formerly stood to the west of this range, adjacent to what was presumably a threshing barn.

The walled garden is enclosed by a tall rubble coped wall with areas of twentieth-century repair and replacement. It contains a sundial on a baluster base.

The farm complex illustrates the development of farm dwellings over time, with the smaller mid-eighteenth-century farmhouse now dwarfed by the Regency addition. The contrast in wallhead height and window size between the two reflects the increasing agricultural prosperity from the mid-eighteenth to the nineteenth century, despite the earlier house itself being an improved dwelling for its period. The multiple bed closets throughout the later house suggest that a considerable number of people were once accommodated within it. The interior arrangements of the byre are largely intact—increasingly rare as modern milking sheds have become standard. Although no longer used for dairy purposes, the original stone trevises and fireclay troughs remain in place.

John Wylie, recorded as a cheese dealer at Highgate in 1837, would have been a tenant of Robert Biggart. Wester Highgate continues to operate as a dairy farm and remains in the hands of the Wylie family. Highgate is marked on Andrew Armstrong's map of 1775, Wester Highgate appears as a large house on John Thomson's map of 1828, and the farm is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858.