Walled Garden And Gatepiers, Leagarth House Including Hall, Fetlar

The property comprises a house, a hall, a walled garden, and gatepiers, built in 1901, with a large verandah added after 1920 by builder Aitken of Lerwick. The house is an unusual tall, gabled, three-bay, two-storey and attic building with a large wrap-around glazed verandah to the south and west. It was built for the eminent physician Sir William Watson Cheyne, who followed Lord Lister in developing antiseptic surgery, and is constructed from mass concrete.

The principal elevation faces south, featuring a projecting gable on the right, a flat-roofed porch in the re-entrant angle incorporating a timber door, a decoratively astragalled semicircular fanlight, flanking roundheaded windows, and a flat-roofed verandah to the left. The windows are regularly tripartite on the ground and first floors, with a bipartite window in the gablehead on the right and two gabled dormer windows on the left.

The west elevation has a full-width verandah projecting from the ground floor, with a tall gabled bay incorporating a four-light canted window on the first floor and timber bargeboarding to the dormerhead of a decoratively astragalled canted window in the centre of a long, low bay on the left. The north elevation features a narrow courtyard flanked by projecting ranges, the range on the right gabled and the range on the left piended, retaining decorative bargeboarding in the set-back gablehead on the left. A long, single-storey, piend-roofed office range extends to the east.

Most windows are multi-pane sashes with a taller vertical two-pane glazing pattern; some are decoratively astragalled, although some modern glazing exists on the south elevation. The roof is covered with grey slate and terracotta ridge tiles, with concrete ridge stacks containing clay cans.

The interior is largely unaltered and features timber-lined walls and ceilings. Original decorative timber and cast iron fireplaces, early light fittings, architraved panelled timber doors, and picture rails remain. The encaustic tiled porch floor leads to a stairhall with a timber dog-leg staircase featuring ball-finialled newels. A large living room includes a kingpost truss roof and fitted benches to a canted-out window bay with tracery-type astragals. A bedroom has a diminutive broken pediment detail above the corner hanging space. The kitchen contains a small range, full-height fitted cupboards, and servant bell boxes. A washhouse has paired Belfast sinks on a sturdy porcelain centre column.

The hall, with a principal south elevation, is of rectangular plan and is crowstepped, linked to the main building by a verandah on a deep concrete base with a curved forestair on the west side. The hall has a simple interior with a boarded timber dado and stage.

The walled garden is enclosed by high, flat-coped concrete walls, stepped in places, set to a rectangular plan and situated to the west of the hall. A pair of square-section, ball-finialled gatepiers are positioned to the west of the lodge.