Manse, Hillside Free Church, Baliasta, Unst

The site comprises a late 1843 Free Church, its remains linked by a formal arrangement of walls to a contemporary symmetrical two-storey, three-bay former manse with outbuildings to the northwest.

The church is currently roofless, consisting of a rectangular hall with a three-bay layout and a vestry wing projecting to the north. It has a base course and windows with projecting sills. The walls are harled rubble with sandstone ashlar dressings and margins. The south gable is symmetrical, with three bays; the centre bay is slightly advanced and features a round-arched entrance door with a dated keystone and an armorial panel with an inscription centred in the gablehead, rising from a harled plinth to a pedimented ashlar bellcote. Regular windows are in the flanking bays. The east and west elevations are also symmetrical, with three widely-spaced, regularly-fenestrated bays. The north gable includes a bipartite window in a projecting wing, with two-bay side elevations and doors in a re-entrant angle with the principal gable. A harled and coped stack sits atop the north gable.

The manse is a symmetrical two-storey, three-bay structure with a gabled two-storey wing to the north (rear), forming a T-shaped plan. Its walls are harled, with sandstone ashlar margins to windows and doors. The south (principal) elevation features a panelled and glazed timber entrance door with a five-pane fanlight at ground level in the centre bay, and regular fenestration in the flanking bays and at the first floor. The west gable has a single window at ground level on the left. The rear north elevation is blank, with a projecting wing roughly centred; a blank north gable, infilled doors at ground level on the east side, and a window and door at ground level and a single window at first floor on the west side. A later two-storey infill occupies the west re-entrant angle. Timber sash and case windows are present throughout, with plate glass in the principal range, four-pane glazing in the infill, and nine-pane glazing surviving in the wing. The grey slate roof has cement-rendered skew copes, and harled gablehead stacks, all coped with circular cans.

Inside the manse, many earlier 19th-century fittings remain, including six-panel doors, panelled shutters and cupboard doors on the first floor, a timber stair with turned spindles, inter-war fireplaces in the downstairs rooms, and a delicate reeded timber fireplace in the drawing room on the first floor.

A pair of single-storey, three-bay, shallow-gabled outbuildings, aligned east-west, are located nearby, with a small square, mono-pitch building centred between them. One west-facing building has been extended to the west, while the east-facing building is roofless. The western outbuilding has felt roofing.

Formal arrangements of random rubble boundary and garden walls enclose the churchyard, bounded to the west by a pleasance to the manse, flanked by small walled enclosures. Cement-rendered and lined square gatepiers with pyramidal caps centre the south walls of the pleasance and churchyard, leading to a wall-lined approach, terminated to the south by square rubble gatepiers.