Place And Lodges, 1-4 Annsbrae House, Lerwick

Dated 1791, Place and Lodges, 1-4 Annsbrae House is a complex comprising a two-storey, three-bay symmetrical house with adjoining pavilions flanking it, alongside additional gabled outbuildings oriented at right angles. The house overlooks a formal garden that slopes to the north, with a central gate leading to Hillhead. The complex includes flanking single-storey and attic pavilions and subsidiary gates. The buildings have harled walls with droved ashlar dressings.

Annsbrae House is symmetrical, featuring a base course and a cavetto eaves cornice. Margined corners and windows have projecting cills. The north (principal) elevation has a flat-roofed, droved ashlar entrance porch centered at ground level. It features a nine-panel, two-leaf timber entrance door with four-pane fixed-lights in the side elevations. Regular fenestration is present in the flanking bays and at the first floor. Single-storey, single-bay end elevations extend to the wings on the outer left and right. The west elevation has a two-bay gable with a single window at the first floor in the bay to the right. The south (rear) elevation is near-symmetrical and includes a modern concrete stair leading to a four-panel entrance door at the first floor with a round-arched five-pane fanlight. A small window is positioned below the stair, with a door adjacent to the left. The elevation also features regular fenestration in the flanking bays and advanced, gabled wings. A random rubble retaining wall, finished with a modern ashlar cope and railing, is also present. The east elevation is a blank gable, obscured at ground level by a pavilion.

Timber sash and case windows are predominantly 12-pane at the principal openings. The roof is covered in grey slate with cast-iron gutters and downpipes, piended to the north at the pavilions. Droved sandstone ashlar four-flue apex stacks are present on the principal gables, featuring ashlar skew copes and circular cans. Harled single-flue apex stacks, also coped with circular cans, are on the south gables of the pavilions.

The outbuildings are single-storey, gabled, with multi-pane timber windows, vertically-boarded timber doors, slated roofs, and tall, broad stone apex stacks with circular cans.

1 Annsbrae Place is a single-storey and attic pavilion of roughly square plan. Its principal elevation, facing north, has a door in the bay to the right and a window in the bay to the left. The east elevation is blank and gabled, while the west elevation is modern, with a lean-to addition to the south. The principal window is a four-pane timber sash and case, and the entrance door is modern. It has a purple-grey slate roof, piended to the west, and a modern box dormer in the north pitch. A harled apex stack, coped with a circular can, is also present. 2 Annsbrae Place is a mirrored image of the above, with 12-pane timber sash and case glazing to its principal window.

Boundary walls and gates consist of stugged and droved sandstone gatepiers with bases and pyramidal caps, centered between the north pavilions. They are flanked by two-leaf wrought-iron gates with fleur-de-lys finials. A cement-rendered and lined wall with a saddleback cope is surmounted by a railing with fleur-de-lys finials and pineapple finials to the stanchions. The wall terminates to the east and west (adjacent to the pavilions) by battered, droved ashlar piers with bases and corniced pyramidal caps. Harled walls with modern ashlar copes bound the garden to the east and west.