Editing St Kilda, Scotland (section)

=== Medieval village ===
[[File:St Kilda village.jpg|thumb|The Village. The Head Wall surrounds the site, with Tobar Childa top left, the 19th-century Street at the centre and the new military base to the right.]]

A medieval village lay near Tobar Childa, about {{Convert|350|m}} from the shore, at the foot of the slopes of Conachair. The oldest building is an underground passage with two small annexes called ''Taigh an t-Sithiche'' (house of the faeries) which dates to between 500&nbsp;BC and 300&nbsp;AD. The St Kildans believed it was a house or hiding place, although a more recent theory suggests that it was an [[Ice house (building)|ice house]].<ref>Quine (2000) pages 52–3.</ref>

Extensive ruins of field walls and ''cleitean'' and the remnants of a [[medieval]] "house" with a beehive-shaped annexe remain. Nearby is the "Bull's House", a roofless rectangular structure in which the island's bull was kept during winter. Tobar Childa itself is supplied by two springs that lie just outside the Head Wall that was constructed around the Village to prevent sheep and cattle gaining access to the cultivated areas within its boundary.<ref name="Quine (2000) page 30.">Quine (2000) page 30.</ref> There were 25 to 30 houses altogether. Most were [[blackhouse]]s of typical Hebridean design, but some older buildings were made of corbelled stone and turfed rather than thatched. The turf was used to prevent the ingress of wind and rain, and the older "beehive" buildings resembled green hillocks rather than dwellings.<ref>Maclean (1977) page 66.</ref>