Hillside, South Walls, Hoy

Hillside is a late 19th-century house with an upper storey added in 1910. It is a two-story, three-bay rectangular building with a well-preserved interior, and it has an attached single-story, L-shaped outbuilding range that incorporates a barn and byre. The house is harled (roughcast), while the outbuilding range is built of coursed rubble. The windows on the first floor are smaller than those on the ground floor and sit close to the eaves. The gables have concrete coping.

The east-facing (entrance) elevation features a gabled porch added in 1955, with an architraved entrance and a satellite dish to the left. Windows are positioned on each floor, with one above the porch. A single-story outbuilding range adjoins the house to the left. The barn section of the outbuilding has a central entrance with a horizontally divided two-leaf timber door with "portholes" inserted. A former dairy has an entrance with a boarded timber door to the far right, and a window to the left. The gable end of the byre wing projects to the outer left, with a timber door to the return side. A lean-to, for smaller animals like pigs and hens, projects to the right-hand return, featuring a boarded timber door with an inserted "porthole".

The west elevation has a window in each of the three bays on the ground floor, and windows in the outer bays on the first floor. The single-story outbuilding range adjoins to the right. The barn has an entrance with a timber door, a small window to the left, and another entrance with a boarded timber door and "porthole" to the far right.

The north elevation has a blank gable end. The south elevation is blank except for a short wing of the outbuilding range (byre), and a lean-to that is set back slightly. The lean-to has a ventilated timber door with a timber door to its left.

The house has mainly 12-pane timber sash and case windows, and 6-pane fixed frame windows. The roofs are covered with Caithness slate, with corrugated perspex on the lean-to. The byre has two small single-pane rooflights, and the house has larger ones. The porch has a corrugated asbestos roof. Gablehead stacks, with concrete coping and band courses on either side (north and south) of the house, each have a single round can.

The interior of the house retains its original layout and fittings, including timber internal partitions and two box beds. A plain timber fireplace surround is in the room to the left of the entrance. A finely panelled timber door leads to the box bed and adjacent built-in cupboards, which have Adamesque detailing around the upper panels. The room to the right of the entrance (the ben) features a timber fireplace surround with shell motifs and boarded timber lining to the walls. The barn and byre have stone flagged floors. A small threshing mill remains intact in the barn, and there is a timber loft above for storing oats. The byre has stone slab stall partitions and a central drainage channel.