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Summary

Description

Villians Crofthouse is single storey, three bays wide and built in harled rubble with a gabled porch in the centre bay. The porch has a four-pane timber fixed-light and a vertically-boarded timber door. Attached to the northeast gable of the crofthouse is a lower wing, constructed in flagstone rubble and used for storage. Adjoining this is a roofless barn .

The crofthouse has shallow-pitched felt roof and harled chimneystack on the gables. The lower wing has the remains of taekket (thatched) roof, understood to have been rethatched in 2014 with bale straw from Lerwick. The layers of straw are laid on an underlay of turf, and the roof has been netted with fishing nets and weighted along the eaves using stones and metal poles, which have been secured to the netting with string.

Outbuildings: flagstone rubble outbuildings to the southwest with a shallow-pitched tar roof.

Statement of Special Interest

This small group of buildings is a rare survivor of Shetland vernacular techniques in a prominent roadside position.

It is among a relatively small number of traditional buildings with a surviving thatched roof found across Scotland. A Survey of Thatched Buildings in Scotland, published in 2016 by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), found there were only around 200 buildings of this type remaining, most of which are found in small rural communities. Thatched buildings are often traditionally built, showing distinctive local and regional building methods and materials. Those that survive are important in helping us understand these traditional skills and an earlier way of life.

Listed building record revised in 2020.

References

Bibliography

About Listed Buildings

Historic Environment Scotland is responsible for designating sites and places at the national level. These designations are Scheduled monuments, Listed buildings, Inventory of gardens and designed landscapes and Inventory of historic battlefields.

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