Description

Later 19th century. Group of three horizontal "clack" mills. Mills conform to standard arrangement of rectangular and gabled buildings containing upper and lower houses with square openings to inlet and outlet. Drystone rubble walls.

West mill: roofless, upper house converted to lamb house, footbridge constructed from two large irregular slabs adjacent to west.

Centre mill: ruinous, partial survival of north gable with outlet at lower house surviving.

North mill: slab footbridge to west, adjacent to sluice gate feeding timber lade, and shute to tirl in lower house; vertically-boarded timber door in east gable, 'taekket' (straw thatched) roof, netted and with linkstanes (weights).

Statement of Interest

Associated with crofting settlement of Southvoe (now Shetland Crofthouse Museum, see separate listing LB5413).

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 2019 as part of the Thatched Buildings Listing Review 2017-19.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17851502

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects by Harwood, Richard (2012) Paperback