Burnt spread, Ardcloyne, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Burnt spread, Ardcloyne, Co. Cork

In a pasture field in Ardcloyne, County Cork, a patch of blackened soil and heat-shattered stone sits quietly beneath the grass, the remnant of some ancient episode of sustained burning whose purpose has never been formally established.

It lies roughly 145 metres north-north-west of a tower house, that particular kind of fortified medieval residence common across Ireland from around the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, and the proximity is suggestive, though it proves nothing on its own.

What survives is described as a burnt spread, a term used in Irish field archaeology to indicate a concentration of fire-cracked stone and charred or discoloured earth. These features are often associated with fulacht fiadh, a type of prehistoric cooking or industrial site in which water was heated by dropping fire-heated stones into a trough, causing them to fracture and accumulate over time in a characteristic mound or spread. Whether this particular feature belongs to that tradition or to some other activity entirely remains unclear. The grass covering the site means that the full extent of the spread cannot currently be determined, leaving open the question of how significant a deposit might lie beneath the surface.

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Pete F
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