Fulacht fia, Ferryfort, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Ferryfort, Co. Cork

In a field near Ferryfort in north Cork, two low mounds of blackened, fire-cracked stone sit quietly in pasture, about fourteen metres from a spring.

They are not dramatic to look at, barely reaching knee height, but they represent a type of site found in the hundreds across Ireland, one that has puzzled and fascinated archaeologists for generations. These are the remains of a fulacht fia, a Bronze Age cooking place, where water was heated by dropping stones that had been fired in a hearth directly into a trough or pit. The burnt and shattered stones were then discarded to the side, and over repeated use across many seasons or even centuries, those discards accumulated into the distinctive horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive today.

The two mounds at Ferryfort together measure roughly eighteen metres from north-north-east to south-south-west, nine metres across, and stand about 0.8 metres high. Their proximity to a natural spring is entirely typical of the form; fulachta fia are almost always found near reliable water sources, which were essential to the whole process. The paired arrangement here may indicate that what survives is actually the remnant of a single larger mound that has been partially levelled over time, whether by agriculture, land clearance, or simple erosion. Bronze Age in date, these sites are thought to relate to communal cooking, though some researchers have proposed other uses including textile processing or bathing.

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