Burnt mound, Cloonakeemoge, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ritual/Ceremonial
What looks like an unremarkable dip in a field drain turns out to be the edge of something far older.
In the waterlogged pasture of a flat-bottomed valley in Cloonakeemoge, a layer of burnt stone and charcoal roughly twelve metres long and seventy centimetres deep sits just beneath the surface, exposed only where a drain cuts through the ground. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or heating site found widely across Ireland, typically identified by a mound of fire-cracked stone left behind after repeated use of a water trough heated by dropping in stones from a fire. They are among the most common prehistoric monuments in the country, yet they remain easy to miss.
What makes this valley unusual is its density. Along a stretch of approximately one and a half kilometres, several fulachtaí fia and burnt mounds cluster together at the base of the valley, suggesting that this low-lying, wet ground was returned to repeatedly over time, perhaps over generations. The mound at Cloonakeemoge sits alongside a NE-SW field wall that also marks a townland boundary, and the exposed section in the drain reveals the characteristic burnt-stone signature just beneath a thin sod layer. There is a separate fulacht fia only ten metres to the north, and a further burnt mound a few metres to the south on a slight rise. It is considered possible that this mound and the southern one are not separate monuments at all, but rather two parts of a single, larger site whose full extent has yet to be established.