Fulacht fia, Bolany, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Settlement Sites
Beneath a Wexford pasture field, there is, or once was, a kidney-shaped mound of charred stones and black earth, roughly ten metres long and standing over a metre high.
By 1987, it had vanished entirely from the surface, swallowed back into the landscape. Only the Ordnance Survey map of 1940 still marked it plainly: a fulacht fia.
A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stones beside a trough or water source. The stones would be heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled pit to bring it to boiling point, cooking meat or, as some researchers have proposed, serving other purposes such as bathing or brewing. The Bolany example fits the pattern closely. It sat near the floor of a west-east stream, the Blackwater, lying roughly two hundred metres to the south, and when it was recorded in 1939 by the Ordnance Survey field workers, it retained a slight opening to the west where a north-south drain was visible. The mound's dimensions, around ten metres by five metres and about 1.3 metres high, were typical for the type. Joseph Ranson also noted it in a 1945 publication, but by the time fieldworkers returned in 1987, the mound had gone, levelled or dispersed by decades of agriculture. Adding a further layer of interest to this corner of County Wexford, two possible standing stones survive in the vicinity, one roughly 150 metres to the south and another about 190 metres to the east, hinting that this area may once have carried more significance in the prehistoric landscape than the now-blank pasture suggests.