Unst, Baltasound, Halligarth House

Halligarth House is an unusual Unst house consisting of two detached but interlinked three-bay, single storey and attic houses running parallel to one another. The 1832 back house sits behind the slightly larger front house of 1839. The two houses are connected via a flat-roofed linking block. It is located at Baltasound on the east coast of Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands. The house is situated within enclosed grounds in open landscape with a woodland walled garden and adjoining family burial enclosure to the northeast. Halligarth was the home of several generations of an important Shetland family of botanists, doctors, conservationists and authors.

The front house is symmetrical with a crenellated flat-roofed porch (added around 1927) flanked by windows. There are a pair of flat-roofed dormers breaking the wallhead. To the northeast gable is a single storey, pitched roof extension (added around 1860). The southwest and northeast gables of the back house are notable for their unusually angled window openings at attic level. The house as a whole has predominantly 4-pane timber sash and case windows. It has broad, gable-end chimney stacks and is roofed with grey slates.

The interior, seen in 2018, retains much of its 19th century character and room plan. There are boarded timber doors, moulded timber fire surrounds, timber shutter and simple beaded timber surrounds and cornicing in most rooms. The back house is slightly smaller with stone flags in the ground floor kitchen area and a straight staircase. The front house has a dog-leg stair with timber handrail and turned banisters. Most ground floor rooms have simple timber panelled ceilings and timber dado rails. There is a privy within the flat-roofed linking block.

The woodland garden to the northeast is square-plan, surrounded by a rubble boundary wall. There is a pedestrian gate to the southwest side and an opening in the northwest into a rectangular-plan, family burial enclosure. The enclosure contains a large number of 19th and 20th century gravestones, wall plaques and markers relating to the Edmondston-Saxby family including wall, some with decorative cast-iron surrounds. The house sits within a large rectangular-plan rubble wall enclosure extending southeast towards Buness House (see LB17478).