Howan, Egilsay

Howan, located in Egilsay, is a late 17th century, two-storey, three-bay traditional laird’s house that is part of the south range of a U-plan courtyard. The building has roofless single-storey service wings forming the north and east ranges, while the west curtain wall to the courtyard is missing. The exterior is finished in harled rubble with flagstone, featuring crowstepped gables, contrasting sandstone quoins, and chamfered reveals.

On the south elevation, which is the principal facade, there is a central two-storey lean-to porch and stairtower, although the roof is missing. The ground floor features a double-width doorway and a window to the left return, with a window above on the first floor. There are windows on both floors in the right return, along with two doorways at ground and first floor behind the porch. The flanking bays have single windows that are irregularly disposed on both floors. To the outer right, there is a three-bay single-storey wing with a single window in each bay.

The north elevation, facing the courtyard, has windows of irregular size and arrangement in each of its three bays. There is a stump of the curtain wall and an arched gateway located between the central and outer right bays. A single-storey wing adjoins the outer left, but its wall is largely collapsed, and the central crowstepped gable is now missing.

The west elevation features windows that are irregularly disposed at the ground and first floor, with the first-floor windows being blocked, and there is a window in the gablehead.

The east elevation of the main house includes a fireplace at ground level, raggles for a flag slate roof, and a single window set in the gablehead. The east range of the courtyard contains a single-storey drystone store, while the north range has the roofless remains of a gabled wing.

Notable features include a 12-pane timber sash and case window on the south ground floor outer right and the north first floor outer left. The building has a flag slate roof, corniced gablehead stacks, and beaked skewputts, with one skewputt to the northeast initialled "WD MM" for William Douglas and his wife Marjorie Monteith.

Inside, the structure is largely derelict, but timber joists and flooring remain on the first floor. The east doorway of the south wall is architraved with a decorative carved lintel inscribed "16.AMICIS.ET.GENIO.81". There is a badly weathered stone fireplace with fluted jambs in the west gable, and a roll-moulded stone fireplace in the west gable of the single-storey wing, which formerly displayed the arms and initials of Robert Monteith and Katherine Nisbet, dated 1635.