Unst, Baltasound, Halligarth House, Garden Walls

Halligarth House is an unusual dwelling on Unst, comprising two detached but interlinked three-bay, single-storey and attic houses situated parallel to one another. The rear house dates from 1832, set behind the slightly larger front house of 1839. The two houses are connected via a flat-roofed linking block. The property is located at Baltasound on the east coast of Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands, and sits within enclosed grounds in open landscape, featuring a woodland walled garden and an adjoining family burial enclosure to the northeast. Halligarth was the home of several generations of an important Shetland family of botanists, doctors, conservationists and authors.

The front house exhibits a symmetrical facade with a crenellated flat-roofed porch (added around 1927) flanked by windows. A pair of flat-roofed dormers breaks the wallhead. A single-storey, pitched-roof extension was added around 1860 to the northeast gable. The southwest and northeast gables of the back house are distinguished by their unusually angled window openings at attic level. The house generally features 4-pane timber sash and case windows, broad gable-end chimney stacks, and a roof covered with grey slates.

The interior, observed in 2018, retains much of its 19th-century character and room layout. It includes boarded timber doors, moulded timber fire surrounds, timber shutters, simple beaded timber surrounds, and cornicing in most rooms. The back house is slightly smaller and includes stone flags in the ground-floor kitchen area and a straight staircase. The front house has a dog-leg stair with a timber handrail and turned banisters. Most ground floor rooms feature simple timber panelled ceilings and timber dado rails. A privy is located within the flat-roofed linking block.

The woodland garden to the northeast is square, enclosed by a rubble boundary wall, with a pedestrian gate on the southwest side and an opening to the northwest leading into a rectangular family burial enclosure. This enclosure contains a considerable number of 19th and 20th-century gravestones, wall plaques, and markers relating to the Edmondston-Saxby family, some with decorative cast-iron surrounds. The house is situated within a large rectangular rubble wall enclosure extending southeast toward Buness House.