Fulacht fia, Croghtenclogh, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Settlement Sites
Beneath the foundations of a house in Croghtenclogh, County Kilkenny, lies what was once identified as a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland.
The typical form involves a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and cracked stone, accumulated over repeated use beside a trough that would have been filled with water and heated by dropping fire-scorched stones into it. They date mostly to the Bronze Age, and their sheer abundance across the Irish landscape makes each individual example easy to overlook, which is precisely what appears to have happened here.
A researcher named Prendergast recorded the site in 1977, noting its presence in gently undulating pasture on ground that had been reclaimed from rough land only a few years earlier, in the mid-1970s. By the time anyone returned to inspect it in 1987, no trace was visible at ground level. A house was subsequently built at the location, effectively sealing whatever remained beneath it. The sequence is a quietly common one in Irish archaeology: a site surfaces in the record, then disappears from the landscape before any detailed investigation can take place, leaving only the original citation as evidence that anything was ever there.