Walled Garden And Gatepiers, Laxfirth House, Lax Firth is a Grade C listed building in the Shetland Islands local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 28 July 2000. Laird's house.

Walled Garden And Gatepiers, Laxfirth House, Lax Firth

WRENN ID
rusted-truss-raven
Grade
C
Local Planning Authority
Shetland Islands
Constituency
Orkney and Shetland MP: Mr Alistair Carmichael (LD)
Country
Scotland
Date first listed
28 July 2000
Type
Laird's house
OS grid reference
HU 436 470
Coordinates
60.20577, -1.21485
Source
Historic Environment Scotland listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Walled Garden and Gatepiers at Laxfirth House date from the 18th century and were remodeled in the 19th century. This two-storey, five-bay symmetrical laird's house features a main block with a rectangular plan and a large two-storey square-plan wing at the rear. The exterior is rendered and painted, with painted long and short quoins framing the windows.

The south elevation is symmetrical, featuring a modern lean-to porch at the center of the ground floor, with three closely spaced windows above. The outer bays display regular fenestration. The west elevation shows a blank gable on the right side of the main block, while the wing on the left is recessed and has windows on both the ground and first floors.

On the east elevation, there is a single-storey gabled wing projecting from the main block on the left, with an irregularly fenestrated wing elevation recessed on the right. The building has modern glazing throughout, a purple-grey slate piended roof on the main block, and a flat felted roof on the rear wing. There are pairs of shouldered three-flue wallhead stacks on the rear elevation of the main block, and four-flue shouldered wallhead stacks on the east and west elevations of the wing.

The walled garden is enclosed by a random rubble wall that extends south from the house, featuring painted ball-finialled square gatepiers at the center of the south wall.

Local climate

Walled Garden And Gatepiers, Laxfirth House, Lax Firth sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,120 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 88% 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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