Monument record 1937 - ALLT CHRISAL, BARRA

NL69NW 7.07 6432 9771.

T30: This small house stood only 5m from the sea, at the edge of a steep cliff about 8m high. It was excavated in 1989 in its entirety and subsequently completely destroyed in road-making.
The building measured 9.4m by 6.6m at its maximum, but itss thick walls reduced the living space in the single room within to 5.3m by 3.3m. The walls were faced with mostly large roughly oblong blocks of stone, packed with small stones and earth, and nowhere more than two courses high. The E, W and S walls were faced on both sides, but the rear (N) wall had only an inside face at foundation level, being revetted into the hillslope. The entrance faced S, protected from the wind by a thickening of the S wall as it approached the doorway from the W.
Inside the hut, below sandy brown hillwash, a single sticky black deposit up to 20cms thick at its deepest overlay a brown homogenous peat and an undistrubed natural surface. the black layer is interpreted as occupation material comprised of decayed organic floor covering. Four flint flakes were recovered from this deposit but they were so small that they could have been incorporated in a variety of processes. The only other artefact was a piece of clay pipe stem from the hillwash filling the building. Local oral tradition claims that the house was used by a kelp-burner in the later 19th century, and the remains of a small kelp oven were found outside the door; one or two kelp ovens have also been found 35m W.
K Branigan 1989e; K Branigan and P Foster 1995; NMRS MS/595/3.

K Branigan, 1989e, 'Small croft T30', 69 (Unpublished document). SWE10412.

K. Brannigan & P. Foster, 1995, Barra: archaeological research on Ben Tangaval from the end of the Ice Age to the Crofting Commissio, 37, 51, 163 plan: p. 162, fig. 5.1 (Bibliographic reference). SWE33223.