Burnt mound, Doonflin, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In a stretch of wet, marshy pasture at the base of a ridge in Doonflin, County Sligo, a low mound of heat-shattered stone sits in the soil, never having made it onto any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps.
It is a fulacht fiadh, a type of prehistoric cooking or industrial site found widely across Ireland, typically identified by the characteristic crescent or kidney-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone left behind after repeated cycles of heating rocks and plunging them into a water-filled trough. What makes this particular spot quietly unusual is not any single mound but the clustering of four such sites in close proximity, strung along either side of a drainage channel that cuts across the landscape.
The fourth fulacht fiadh in the group is the one most closely described. It rises to about 0.6 metres at its highest point and takes a D-shaped form when viewed in plan, measuring roughly 13 metres along its longer axis and 11.3 metres across. Like the others nearby, it is composed of fragments of burnt stone set in dark, organically rich soil. Three of the four sites line the south-eastern side of a north-east to south-west drain, spaced approximately 30 and 35 metres apart. The fourth sits on the opposite, north-western bank. Where the drain now cuts through the south-western edge of this fourth mound, the original trough, the pit or hollow that would have held water during use, was most likely positioned. The drain has since obscured or removed that evidence, leaving only the spread of discarded stone to mark what once happened here.