When walking along Hirta Main Street keep a count of the houses and look for houses 7 and 8. Follow the wall that marks their plot border towards Hirta Bay until it stops, a few yards in front is the remnants of the cist. That is the easy way, I on the other hand decided that almost every neuk and crannie had to be explored.
Not much remains except for some stones set on edge, the loose lintels have probably been placed in one of the nearby walls.
When you look up and all round from this location you can see what a huge amphitheatre this place is, just how high the hills are and just how good the prehistoric folks nautical skills were. Then a helicopter interrupts, look slightly to the east and the view is of large tanks of the fuel variety. Prehistory and modern life in the space of a second.
Village Bay (Burnt Mound / Fulacht Fia) — Fieldnotes
Just a few metres to the west of the cist is a wall and on the other side of this can be found the remnants of a burnt mound. The oval shaped site is 20m by 10m and set in what appears to be waste ground, for much later settlers, near a consumption dyke. At its highest it is no more than 0.4m.
If you look closely in the walls burnt and broken pebbles can be seen and I agree with Canmore that there must have been several of these mounds, as there must have been cists whose stones probably provided lintels for the village houses.
Once again it is an indicator that the prehistoric people had a better time of it than later settlers. It certainly proves that they had a wider food choice.
After this we had to visit the faeries and their house.
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Posted by drewbhoy
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