Fulacht fia, Bromley, Co. Wicklow

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Bromley, Co. Wicklow

Road construction has a long history of turning up the unexpected, and a stretch of work near Greystones in County Wicklow proved no exception.

During excavations linked to the Greystones Southern Access Route, eleven pits and post-holes were uncovered at the Bromley site. The excavator proposed that these features may relate to fulacht fia activity, placing this unremarkable-sounding patch of ground in a tradition of prehistoric cooking that stretches back several thousand years across the Irish landscape.

A fulacht fia is essentially an ancient cooking site, typically identified by a mound of fire-cracked stones alongside a trough that would have been filled with water. Stones were heated in a fire and dropped into the trough to bring the water to a boil, cooking meat or, as some researchers have argued, serving other purposes such as brewing or bathing. The eleven pits and post-holes at Bromley are consistent with this kind of activity, though the excavator stopped short of a firm identification, noting only that the features possibly pointed in that direction. The findings were recorded during works carried out under Excavation Licence 04E0128 ext and later published by Wiggins in 2008.

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