Monument record MHG5959 - Upper Halistra

NG25NW 1.01 245 597.

The township of Halistra comprises 99 buildings and at least 19 small enclosures scattered over a distance of 900m (NG 247 597 to 237 601) along the lower terraces of the SW slope of Ben Halistra, immediately NE of the public road to Trumpan. There is no clear lay-out, core or plan to the settlement and there is little juxtaposition of farmstead one with another, with two major gaps of 180m and 80m respectively between various parts of the settlement.
The township comprises more than 18 units or farmsteads defined primarily by the presence of small enclosures or gardens, often sub-rectangular in shape and built-up with soil on the inside (eg 568), adjacent or attached to which is at least one long building of more than about 10m in length as well as one or more subsidiary buildings. There are three corn-drying kilns, which are built as small platforms into the corners of subsidiary buildings (5, 14, 81).
Some 28 buildings displayed visible sub-division of which two had three compartments and the rest two. Most buildings are constructed across the slope, and only 14 are terraced, one of which is atypically cut sideways to the slope (38). Entrances are generally in the lower end-wall and several were to one end of a side wall. The walls are constructed of a face of boulders infilled by a core of earth-bonded rubble. The corners are rounded, verging on the round-ended on occasion, although a few are squared. The best preserved buildings stand to a height of 1.2m and the walls show signs of narrowing towards the top from a base of up to 1.8m in thickness, although the majority fall in the range 0.9-1.6m. The buildings vary in length from 3.4m to 22.8m, of which only four exceed 16m, and in breadth from 2.5m to 4.5m. There are signs of phasing or sequence in many of the farmsteads in the form of buildings reduced to platforms or cut away in the construction of new structures (eg platform 82 cut by building 7).
(WAT90 1-63, 80-103, 142, 179-183, 460-484, 568, 592).
Visited by RCAHMS (PJD) 1 October 1990.