Fulacht fia, Killosolan, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Killosolan, Co. Galway

A low, C-shaped mound of earth and stone sitting in grass and bogland near Killosolan in County Galway presents an interpretive puzzle that has not been fully resolved.

The mound measures roughly 3.3 metres across and rises to a maximum height of 1.8 metres, with a hollow centre of about 1.8 metres in diameter opening towards the north-north-east. Its form and bogland setting are consistent with a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found widely across Ireland, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone beside a trough where water was heated using hot stones. The poorly preserved condition of this example, however, leaves room for doubt.

Local opinion has long associated the mound not with prehistoric cooking but with a limekiln situated approximately five metres to the south-west. Limekilns, which were used to burn limestone and produce quicklime for agricultural improvement and building mortar, were common features of the Irish countryside from the medieval period onwards and often left behind low earthen remains that can resemble earlier structures. The nearby kiln was recorded as a small mound on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, published in 1932, which at least confirms it was a recognised feature of the landscape at that point. Whether the two features are genuinely connected, or whether the mound is simply an older site that later acquired a local explanation rooted in more familiar land use, remains an open question.

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Pete F
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