tholtan

plural tholtans

1. chiefly Isle of ManAn abandoned house; the ruin of a building which was once a home.

   Near the schoolhouse was a tholtan, a tiny, half-ruined cottage with sagging thatch and the door off its hinges.

   1997, Vivien Allen, Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, page 25

   2 more examples

   You can be sitting in a tholtan down in back Castle Street in Peel in a bit of property that is not fit to live in, but it will still be rated at about £55. So the whole system, really, is wrong.

   1981, The Times Reports of Debates in the Manx Legislature, volume 98, page T-905

   Throughout the Isle, abandoned tholtans, devoid of their thatched roofs and whitewash, are silent reminders of the people who once were sheltered near the warmth of their hearths and sang in their own Celtic tongue.

   1995 July–August, Ancestry Magazine, volume 13, number 4