Fulacht fia, Currahaly, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
In a marshy field beside a stream in Currahaly, County Cork, a low oval mound sits quietly in the ground, its modest dimensions, roughly fourteen and a half metres long, five and a half metres wide, and half a metre high, giving little away.
It is made almost entirely of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the characteristic debris of a fulacht fia, and there are four more just like it in the same field.
A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, particularly in low-lying, waterlogged ground near streams or springs. The typical arrangement involved a trough dug into the earth, filled with water, and heated by dropping fire-heated stones into it until the water boiled. The stones, once used, crack and shatter and are discarded into a mound nearby, which is precisely what survives at Currahaly. These sites date broadly to the Bronze Age, though some continued in use later, and Ireland has more recorded examples than almost anywhere else in Europe. What makes Currahaly quietly remarkable is not any single mound but the concentration of five of them gathered together in one field, suggesting sustained and repeated activity in this particular spot over a considerable period. The proximity to a stream and the marshy ground conditions are entirely typical of the type, water being the essential ingredient in the whole process.