4 Hillhead, Lerwick

4 Hillhead in Lerwick is an early 19th-century house with later alterations, designed in an approximate L-plan with a conservatory projecting to the west. The principal elevation features stugged sandstone, while the side and rear elevations are harl-pointed, all adorned with stugged and droved dressings. The windows have projecting cills.

The west (principal) elevation is asymmetrical with two bays. To the left, there is a single-storey timber conservatory and entrance porch set on a stugged ashlar base, featuring six-pane round-arched fixed lights with stop-chamfered and beaded timber mullions and a glazed piended roof. To the right, a single-storey three-light canted bay, dating from around 1900, includes base, cill, and eaves courses with stop-chamfered arrises. The first floor has regular fenestration, while a two-storey regularly fenestrated bay with a crenellated wallhead is recessed on the right, featuring a circular tower with a tall window in the re-entrant angle.

The north (Law Lane) elevation is blank, with a wallhead stack to the left. The windows are timber sash and case, with some surviving 12-pane designs, while the principal elevation has later glazing consisting of two-pane lower sashes and multi-pane upper sashes. The roof is a purple-grey slate piended platform. The stugged and droved sandstone stacks have copes and are heightened with harled and coped extensions, topped with octagonal cans.

Inside, the entrance door is part-glazed with a four-pane fanlight above, and there is a sunburst fanlight over the vestibule door. The conservatory has a coloured tile floor and vertically-boarded timber lined walls, while the vestibule also features a coloured tile floor. The drawing room includes a swagged plaster frieze with an egg and dart cornice and a dome centring ceiling. A narrow staircase has decorative cast-iron balusters and a timber handrail. The interior doors are six-panel with reeded architraves, and the bedrooms to the rear have a cast-iron Art Nouveau fire grate and a panelled timber chimneypiece.

The boundary walls include a random rubble wall along Law Lane with a vertically-boarded timber door. The wall along Hillhead is a stugged sandstone dwarf wall with an ashlar cope, topped with wrought-iron railings and a matching gate at the centre, flanked by square ashlar piers with bases and pyramidal caps.