Fulacht fia, Capnagower, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Capnagower, Co. Mayo

At Capnagower in County Mayo, a low grassy mound sits quietly on a slope overlooking a peat basin, its horseshoe shape still legible in the landscape after several thousand years.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found widely across Ireland and Britain, typically dated to the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that heated stones were dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and the crescent or horseshoe shape of the surrounding mound came from the gradual accumulation of those cracked and spent stones, discarded to the sides over repeated use. The opening of this particular example faces south-west, towards marshy ground, which is characteristic: fulachtaí fia are almost always found close to a reliable water source.

The mound itself measures roughly 8.20 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and about 6 metres across, with a maximum height of around 0.3 metres on its north-west side. It comprises two roughly oval arms with what appears to be a saddle-like depression between them at the north-east end. A dilapidated field wall, running on a rough north-north-west to south-south-east course, cuts across the eastern side of the mound and partially overlies the south-east arm, which is in any case the fainter of the two. The north-west arm survives in better condition, though heather growth has partially obscured it. The site sits about 20 metres to the south-south-east of a neighbouring monument and lies slightly downslope from it, on ground behind the house of Michael Gerry O'Malley, directly overlooking the northern end of the peat basin to the north-west.

The mound is unassuming enough that it would be easy to walk past without registering it as anything other than a slight irregularity in the ground. The heather cover and the intruding field wall both work against a clean reading of the shape, but the horseshoe outline becomes clearer once you know what you are looking for, particularly from a little distance upslope where the relationship between the two arms and the central depression is easier to make out.

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