Orkney Image Library

If it is from the Melsetter complex, than it's definitely not the main building. Melsetter House itself was - as part of Lethaby's design - plastered from its very beginning.
Nevertheless it might show a part of the garden house (earlier than on picture #1174 ) seen from outside the garden walls ... but I don't remember any windows on ground level ?

More like Berstane House. I don't think Melsetter has a metal rail around a balcony

Definetly not Melsetter House. Far too many trees and there isn't a slope that steep at the angle to the house.

I think it's more likely grainbank house - it does have a metal balcony still in evidence around the side of the house, though in a sore state of repair now and the house has windows below garden level.

I'd say grainbank too, with those ladder windows, though I think the oldest part of berstane (at the rear) was an "ink-bottle" house of similar design.

My mother spent all her holidays at Grainbank House when she was a child with her relatives, the Twatt family, particularly her cousin Lilian Twatt. She often spoke about the wonderful house and she thought that no other property nearby had so many trees around it. I have never visited and so do hope that this is the house that gave my mum so many happy memories.

Pardon my ignorance, but is Grainbank House situated at the bottom of Grainbank Road, or is the similarity in names just coincidence? I remember there being a large house with trees there (i.e. at the bottom of the road), but never deigned to go in...