The structure is not merely old; it sits within a sequence of at least six successive phases of construction in the same area, which means that people were building, demolishing, and rebuilding on this particular patch of ground repeatedly over generations, each new structure partly overlying or cutting through the rubble of what came before.

Excavation of the western half of the house was carried out in 1997 and extended into 1999, work directed by Hayden. The building was rectangular, measuring at least 4.6 metres east to west and approximately 4.3 metres on its other axis, with drystone walls, the technique of building in stone without mortar, running between 0.6 and 0.8 metres thick. The base of the interior faces was lined with large upright slabs, while horizontal-laid masonry formed the outer face and the upper interior course. An internal dividing wall, oriented north to south, was traced through two parallel trenches that still held remnants of a slab-lined partition. Among the more precise domestic details was an underfloor drain, roughly 3.6 metres long, running south-east from the interior north-west corner toward a possible sump; it still retained several of its capstones when uncovered. A second drain and a pit holding a quernstone, the kind of rotary grinding stone used to process grain, were found to the west and south-west respectively. Samples of seeds and charcoal recovered from the site offer the prospect of organic dating and evidence of what was grown or burned there. The trench cut for the northern wall passed through the sealed demolition rubble of an even earlier house beneath, placing this structure in the fifth phase of a building sequence that extended to at least six identifiable episodes in the same location.