Vaila, Vaila House

The small island of Vaila lies just off the coast of south-west mainland Shetland, and a beautiful view of the island and the house may be enjoyed by climbing the hill above Burrastow on the adjacent mainland across Wester Sound. Vaila itself rises to a height of 80m OD on the south side where there are dramatic cliffs and stacks, and on the lower slopes there are a number of burnt mounds which testify to the attraction of the island in prehistoric times. In recent centuries settlement has been concentrated in the north-western part overlooking Vaila Sound. On the shore here are the ruins of a fishing station established in 1837 by Arthur Anderson. This was the Shetland Fishing Company, and its object was to break the lairds' monopoly of fishing; it was a successful enterprise for a few years into the 1940s.

In 1576, King James VI granted permission to Robert Cheyne to build 'ane hous and fortice' on Vaila, but, if this intriguing castle was ever constructed, no trace of it survives today. More than a century later the island was acquired by James Mitchell of Girlsta, who was a merchant of Scalloway and who built himself a house there in 1696. This was a plain rectangular block with crowstepped gables, consisting of two storeys and a garret, and it is now the south side of the Victorian house. The original entrance, which opens directly into the Great Hall, still retains its moulded stone surtound and battered armorial panel carved with the arms and motto of the Mitchell family and the date 1696. The old doorway well suits the Great Hall with its Jacobean oak furniture and baronial air.

In 1893 the island was sold to Herbert Anderton, a Yorkshire mill owner with interests in Shetland wool; he commissioned a large new house in Scottish Jacobean style as well as building a house for his farm-manager and a boat-house with a studio above at the east pier, and restoring the old tower west of the big house as an observatory. The new Vaila Hall was built in the final years of the 19th century in a style popular since the middle years of that century, though less elaborate than many. It is a solid two-storey building, facing west, with crow stepped gables to match the old house and embellished with corbelled wall-heads, castellated parapets, a circular corner-tower and castellated turrets supported on decorative corbelling.

Burrastow House on the adjacent mainland (HU 223478), now a hotel) illustrates in its main block the type of house to which the original old Haa of Vaila belonged. On the way to Burrastow from Walls, there are two horizontal mills close to the road at HU 215485.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Shetland’, (1997).