On a low, damp stretch of pasture along the southern bank of the Mannin River in County Mayo, a fulacht fia once stood, and was then quietly erased. Local information records that it was levelled during land reclamation, leaving no visible trace at ground level. The land looks like ordinary grazing land, and in a sense it now is.

A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking or heating site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and shattered stone. The stones would have been heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the contents to a boil. These sites are extraordinarily common across Ireland, dating mostly from the Bronze Age, and they tend to cluster in exactly the kind of low-lying, waterlogged terrain found here beside the Mannin River. The damp ground and proximity to a reliable water source would have made the spot well suited to the purpose. That logic, however, did not protect it. At some point during land reclamation works, the mound was cleared away, and the stones that might have told a more precise story about the site's age and use were dispersed or buried.