Wester Highgate And Highgate House

Wester Highgate Farm and Highgate House comprises two adjoining dwellings of contrasting periods, forming an L-plan farm complex with ancillary buildings and a walled garden. The earlier house dates to 1757, identified by a dated lintel inscribed 'TB MJ', while the later addition dates to 1818, marked by a dated stone above the entrance inscribed 'RB MS'. The inscribed initials are those of Thomas Biggart and his wife, and Robert Biggart and his wife respectively.

The earlier farmhouse is a two-storey, three-bay structure built in coursed sandstone with ashlar margins and an eaves cornice. It has enlarged window openings to the ground floor, three small first-floor windows, and a roll-moulded surround to the central door with an inscribed lintel below the outer left first-floor window. A stone slab well stands in front of the later house.

The later addition to the left is a two-storey, three-bay structure built in coursed whinstone rubble with raised sandstone ashlar margins (painted), angle margins, eaves course and cornice. It features a central timber-panelled door set within 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. A rubble segmental arch at the left links the house to a small cartshed.

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

The interior of the later house preserves good original woodwork. The dining room features a buffet niche with scalloped-edged shelves (doors missing) and a cupboard below, flanked by two-leaf doors to former bed closets, with reeded architraves. The former first-floor drawing room contains five original unpainted timber doors with broad reeded architraves and corner roundels, each with eight bead-moulded fields and central vertical moulding; two-leaf doors access former bed closets. The house is arranged as a single room deep with bed closets on the rear wall of the dining room, a steep central stair, and a kitchen/parlour area on the other side with access to the rear and walled garden. A narrow first-floor corridor provides access to the former drawing room, which is differentiated by its fine-quality doors and architraves—the most elaborate in the house. Two bedrooms are accessed from the hall opposite, though the numerous bed closets throughout suggest the house once accommodated a large number of occupants, possibly including a dairy or milk room.

Throughout the house, UPVC windows have replaced the original glazing; the later house originally had 12-pane timber sash-and-case windows, while the first floor of the earlier house retains late nineteenth or early twentieth-century two-pane sash-and-case windows. The roofs are covered in grey slate with stone ridges and straight stone skews to the later house. Ridge and end stacks are corniced ashlar with moulded octagonal clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout.

The cartshed stands at right angles to the main house, featuring a segmental arch in the gable and a small opening above, covered in grey slates with a stone ridge.

The ancillary range comprises a linear single-storey and attic structure containing a byre, former threshing barn, and stables (or possibly former barn), probably built in three phases with later brick lean-to extensions. The byre retains its original stone trevises and fireclay troughs (probably later). The barn at the north end features scrolled skewputs and straight skews to the gable, dating probably to circa 1759. According to map evidence, a circular horse-engine house was situated to the west of this range, adjacent to what was presumably a threshing barn. The byre, no longer used for its original purpose, remains unusually intact with its interior fittings preserved—an increasingly rare survival as modern milking sheds have become the norm.

The walled garden features a tall rubble-coped wall with areas of twentieth-century non-traditional repair and replacement. A sundial stands on a baluster base within the garden.

Wester Highgate Farm and Highgate House together illustrate the development of farm dwellings from the mid-eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The juxtaposition of the two houses—the small mid-eighteenth-century farmhouse now dwarfed by the Regency version—reflects the increasing prosperity in the area resulting from agricultural improvement. The most obvious changes between the two buildings are the increase in wallhead height and window size, although the smaller house itself represents an early improved dwelling.

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