Fulacht fia, Fahee, Co. Clare

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Fahee, Co. Clare

Beneath a low grass-covered mound on the east bank of a small southward-flowing stream in County Clare, the evidence of prehistoric cooking survives in the form of burnt stone and ash.

The mound is modest, measuring roughly six metres along its longest axis and rising only about eighty centimetres from the surrounding ground, its southern and western edges softened and obscured by vegetation. What it represents, however, is one of the most recognisable traces of Bronze Age activity in the Irish landscape: a fulacht fia, a type of outdoor cooking site in which water held in a trough was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. The stones, once spent, were piled to the side, and it is those accumulated heaps of shattered, heat-reddened rock that survive today as the characteristic horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds found across Ireland in their thousands.

This particular example sits in an area of exposed limestone, scrub, and rough grazing near Fahee, with hazel growing closely to the east and south-southeast. The proximity to running water is entirely characteristic of the site type; fulachtaí fia are almost invariably found beside streams, springs, or boggy ground, a practical necessity given that the cooking method depended on a ready water supply. The site was brought to formal attention through information supplied by a local source, Tom Coffey, and was subsequently listed in the Record of Monuments and Places, the statutory register that offers legal protection to known archaeological sites across the Republic of Ireland.

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