Fulacht fia, Boolabeg, Co. Waterford

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Boolabeg, Co. Waterford

At the base of the Comeragh Mountains in County Waterford, a grass-covered mound roughly the size of a tennis court sits quietly beside a stream, its horseshoe shape still legible after several thousand years. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, the discarded cracked stones gradually accumulating into the characteristic mound that surrounds the trough on three sides. Here, that central depression is still visible, a rectangular hollow measuring four metres long and two and a half metres wide, opening to the west.

The mound itself is substantial, running twenty-seven metres north to south and fifteen metres east to west, rising to about seven-tenths of a metre at its highest points immediately north and south of the trough hollow. Its position on a gentle north-facing slope adjacent to a stream is entirely typical of the type; ready access to water was essential to the whole operation, and such sites cluster along watercourses throughout the Irish landscape. What makes this particular spot quietly notable is that a second fulacht fia lies just seventeen metres to the south, suggesting repeated or concurrent use of this stretch of ground. Whether the two sites were contemporary with one another or represent activity at different periods is not something the surface evidence can settle, but their proximity hints at something more deliberate than coincidence in the choice of this location at the mountain's edge.

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Pete F
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