Fulacht fia, Urraghilmore, Co. Cork
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Settlement Sites
In a pasture field in north Cork, beside a spring, there is a low, roughly square mound of burnt stone and scorched earth, eight metres across and half a metre high.
It would be easy to walk past it without a second thought. But this modest hump in the ground is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland and Britain, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that water was heated in a trough by dropping fire-cracked stones into it, after which the discarded, shattered stone accumulated into the characteristic horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound. The association with springs and wet ground is no accident; access to a reliable water source was the whole point.
The mound at Urraghilmore once stood higher than it does today. Local knowledge holds that it was levelled around 1954, presumably to tidy the pasture or ease the movement of livestock and machinery. What remains is a spread of burnt material measuring roughly eight metres north to south and eight metres east to west, with a row of coniferous trees planted along its western edge. The levelling means some of the original deposit is likely gone or dispersed, though the spring on the northern side of the mound is still there, the same water source that made this spot worth returning to, perhaps repeatedly, over the course of the Bronze Age.