Fulacht fia, Cloonyclohassy, Co. Limerick

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Cloonyclohassy, Co. Limerick

In a field in Cloonyclohassy, County Limerick, a low horseshoe-shaped mound sits on a north-north-east-facing hill slope, unremarkable at a glance but carrying several thousand years of prehistory within its modest dimensions.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found widely across Ireland, typically consisting of a trough that would have been filled with water and heated using fire-cracked stones, which were then discarded into a characteristic mound of burnt material around the edge. The one at Cloonyclohassy measures roughly half a metre in height, 3.5 metres north to south and 4.3 metres east to west, with a north-facing opening just over a metre wide. What makes the location quietly notable is that it does not stand alone.

Six metres to the north-west lies a second fulacht fia, catalogued separately in the Sites and Monuments Record. The two sites sit close to a field boundary, with marshy ground adjoining to the west and north-west, which is entirely consistent with how these monuments tend to be positioned. Proximity to a ready water source was essential to their function, and boggy or low-lying ground frequently preserves the burnt stone material that gives the mounds their distinctive dark, scorched appearance. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the national database in August 2011, placing both sites within the broader survey of Limerick's archaeological landscape.

Both monuments lie in pasture, so access depends on landowner permission and the condition of the ground underfoot, particularly given the marshy terrain to the west of the site. The mounds are low and can be easy to miss in long grass, but the burnt, often blackened stone that makes up the body of a fulacht fia is usually identifiable once you are close. The pairing of two such monuments within a few metres of each other is unusual enough to reward the effort of finding them, offering a rare chance to consider how repeatedly and deliberately this particular slope was used, likely across generations, by people for whom this boggy hillside was neither remote nor unremarkable.

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