Fulacht fia, Aghawinnaun, Co. Clare

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Aghawinnaun, Co. Clare

In a narrow valley tucked between Turlough Hill and Slievecarran in County Clare, a low horseshoe-shaped mound sits quietly in improved pastureland, looking at first glance like little more than a slight rise in the field.

It is, in fact, one of the better-preserved examples of a fulacht fia in the region, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The classic interpretation is that these mounds accumulated over repeated use: stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, shattering in the process, and the discarded burnt and cracked fragments gradually built up into the distinctive horseshoe shape that survives today.

This particular example measures 12.4 metres north to south and 8.5 metres east to west, rising to a maximum height of 0.9 metres at its southern edge. The mound opens to the west, where a livestock watering pond now occupies the gap, and a line of revetting stones, flat or upright stones used to retain and stabilise an earthen bank, runs across the tops of the northern and southern banks and across the open western mouth, neatly separating what would have been the working trough area from the pond beyond. Where cattle have been poaching the ground at the southern end, that is, churning and softening it with their hooves, burnt stone has been exposed just below the surface, confirming the mound's prehistoric character beneath its tidy, agricultural surroundings.

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