Fulacht fia, Curraghoo More, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Curraghoo More, Co. Cork

Inside a ringfort in Curraghoo More, County Cork, there is a spread of burnt stone and scorched earth quietly disappearing beneath grass and vegetation.

It is a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish landscape, and the fact that it sits within the enclosure of an older ringfort makes it a small puzzle in its own right.

Fulachtaí fia are prehistoric cooking sites, found in their thousands across Ireland. The typical arrangement involved a trough filled with water, into which fire-heated stones were dropped to bring the liquid to a boil. The cracked and blackened stones, discarded after use, gradually accumulated into the low horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive today. At Curraghoo More, what remains is described as a partially overgrown spread of burnt material, which suggests the characteristic dark, heat-shattered stone is present but no longer clearly defined at the surface. The added curiosity here is its location inside a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common in early medieval Ireland, typically bounded by an earthen bank and ditch. Whether the fulacht fia predates the ringfort and was simply absorbed into it, or whether both features belong to overlapping periods of activity on the same patch of ground, is not recorded.

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