Fulacht fia, Grangebeg, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Settlement Sites
Somewhere in the flat pastureland of Grangebeg, a Bronze Age cooking site has effectively ceased to exist above ground, leaving only a cartographic ghost. A fulacht fia is a type of ancient outdoor cooking place, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone built up beside a water source, where stones were heated and dropped into a trough of water to bring it to boiling point. For much of prehistory these sites were commonplace across Ireland, yet this particular example in County Kildare has quietly vanished even by modern standards.
The Ordnance Survey six-inch map, in its edition surveyed between 1939 and 1940, recorded a small circular mound here with an estimated maximum diameter of around twenty metres, sitting immediately to the north of a westward-flowing stream. The proximity to water is typical of fulachtaí fia, which required a reliable source close at hand. By 1972, however, when the site was examined on the ground, no visible surface trace remained. The mound had gone, absorbed back into the level pasture that surrounds it, leaving the map entry as the sole surviving evidence that anything had ever been there.
