North House, Melby is a Grade B listed building in the Shetland Islands local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 18 October 1977. Laird's house.
North House, Melby
- WRENN ID
- grey-kitchen-ridge
- Grade
- B
- Local Planning Authority
- Shetland Islands
- Constituency
- Orkney and Shetland MP: Mr Alistair Carmichael (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 18 October 1977
- Type
- Laird's house
- OS grid reference
- HU 186 578
- Coordinates
- 60.30479, -1.66448
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
North House in Melby is an 18th-century former laird's house. It features a 3-bay, 2-storey main house and a single-storey, 10-bay steading that is aligned with the house and adjoins the northern gable. The house has harled walls with stugged sandstone ashlar margins around the doors and windows, while the steading has harl-pointed rubble walls.
The principal (eastern) elevation of the house has a centrally located, 2-leaf vertically-boarded timber door with glazed uppers at ground level, flanked by windows in the adjacent bays. The first floor has regular fenestration, and the southern gable has a 2-bay design with a single window in the right bay at the first floor. The eastern elevation of the steading has 10 bays with a variety of doors and windows.
The house features plate glass timber sash and case windows and has a purple-grey slate roof with ashlar skew-copes and bracketed skewputts. The gablehead stacks are harled and topped with circular cans. The steading also has a purple-grey slate roof, which is piended at the northern end, and includes a single-flue ridge stack with a circular can.
The grounds to the south and west of the house are enclosed by random rubble walls.
Local climate
North House, Melby sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,160 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 89% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 99% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 3 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 98% of listed buildings. Of these, 3 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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