Fulacht fia, Cloonyclohassy, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Cloonyclohassy, Co. Limerick

In a patch of marshy pasture at the foot of an east-facing slope in County Limerick, a low circular mound sits quietly in the landscape, its dark, crumbly interior the product of repeated burning rather than burial.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically Bronze Age in date, and usually identified by the distinctive horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound of heat-shattered, fire-blackened stone that accumulates over centuries of use. The basic method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, an effective if labour-intensive way of cooking large quantities of meat. The mound at Cloonyclohassy measures roughly 11.3 metres north to south and 12 metres east to west, rising to about half a metre in height, though it was once taller. The eastern half has been reduced by quarrying, with the disturbed area covering approximately 7.7 by 10 metres, suggesting the burnt stone was at some point considered useful fill or material for other purposes, a fate that has diminished many such sites across the country.

The site was recorded by Denis Power and uploaded to the national monuments database in August 2011. What makes Cloonyclohassy particularly notable is not the mound in isolation but its immediate surroundings. Around nine metres to the south-east lies a short curving remnant of an old field boundary, low and grassy now, about 0.3 metres high and 2.8 metres wide, the kind of boundary that tends to get absorbed into the land and forgotten. And immediately beyond that are two further fulachta fia, recorded separately as LI019-250 and LI019-251. Three such sites in close proximity, with a relict field boundary threading between them, suggests this corner of Limerick was once a well-used and organised part of the prehistoric landscape rather than a marginal or occasional stopping point.

Access to sites like this is rarely straightforward, as fulachta fia tend to occupy exactly the kind of wet, low-lying ground that makes walking awkward; the marshy pasture noted in the record is a practical warning as much as a landscape description. The mounds are subtle underfoot and easy to walk past without recognising them for what they are, so it is worth knowing in advance that the main mound is roughly circular and that the quarried eastern side will appear noticeably flatter than the western arc. The field boundary and the two companion sites to the south-east are the details that reward a careful look around once the first mound has been located, giving a sense of how prehistoric activity here was clustered rather than isolated.

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