When archaeologist Hayden excavated the site in 1999, what emerged was not a single structure frozen in time but a palimpsest of at least six successive phases of building activity compressed into one relatively small area of hillside. The house in question, roughly 3.4 metres in diameter, had been so thoroughly encroached upon by later construction that its southern portion was truncated by one subsequent house and its northern portion largely removed by another. What survived was enough to read, but only just.

The remains consisted of a drystone wall, a technique in which stones are stacked without mortar, relying on careful selection and placement for stability, running from the south-west to the north-west and from the north-north-east to the east. Along the northern arc, the builders had cut a foundation trench into the upslope of the hillside, and the narrowness of this trench suggests the wall here may have used vertically set stones or a slab-lining rather than horizontal coursing. Large stones with their long axes running along the line of the wall formed the surviving sections. There were two hearths inside: one placed centrally, probably the earlier and primary one, which had been lined, though only the slot trench for one side of that lining survived; and a second hearth positioned against the east wall. Outside the east arc of the house, an annular wall of boulder clay faced with stone was identified, and this outer wall had itself cut through the north-east arc of a neighbouring structure, indicating that even the modifications had been modified. An enclosure whose northern arc sits roughly seven metres to the north may have been associated with the house, though the relationship is not certain. Together with a second house excavated at the same time, this structure was assigned to Phase II of the sequence, meaning at least four further phases of construction followed it in the same locality.