Fulacht fia, Knockuragh, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Settlement Sites
In a patch of wet Tipperary pasture, just above a small stream, sits a low horseshoe-shaped mound that has quietly outlasted almost every structure built in Ireland since.
It belongs to a class of monument known as a fulacht fia, the remains of a prehistoric cooking site, typically Bronze Age, where stones were heated in fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. Thousands of them survive across the Irish countryside, often in damp or low-lying ground near water, and the cluster at Knockuragh is a good example of how they tend to appear not singly but in groups.
This particular mound is roughly sub-triangular in plan, measuring around six metres along its longer sides and just under six metres along the shorter. At its centre sits an oval depression, approximately five metres by three, which may represent a modified trough, the pit into which water was poured and heated stones were plunged. The mound itself is the accumulated debris of those fireside sessions: cracked, fire-shattered stone and charcoal-blackened earth, built up over repeated use. It stands highest on its south-western side, about 0.45 metres, and has weathered lower on the south-eastern and north-eastern edges. A possible opening, roughly 1.9 metres wide, is visible mid-way along the south-western side, which may indicate how the trough was originally accessed. Most intriguingly, a second fulacht fia lies only 1.5 metres to the north-north-east and may actually be conjoined to this one, while a third sits about 26 metres further in the same direction. Whether this reflects repeated use of a particularly convenient spot beside the stream, or something more organised about how people worked and gathered here, is a question the ground alone cannot answer.
