Fulacht fia, Meeneeshal, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
In a pasture beside a stream in Meeneeshal, County Cork, a low grass-covered mound conceals something far older than its unremarkable surface suggests.
The slight rise in the ground is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a trough that would have been filled with water and heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. What accumulates over time is a spread of that shattered, burnt stone, and it is exactly this material, now softened under centuries of turf and grass, that marks the spot today.
The site was noted by Bowman in 1934, who recorded it, along with a second fulacht fia located roughly twenty metres to the south, on land then belonging to a P. Duane. The two sites sit close enough together to suggest either sustained use of this particular stretch of streambank or perhaps repeated return to a place already understood as significant. Fulachta fiadh are almost always found near water, since the entire process depended on a reliable source, and the eastern bank of this stream fits the pattern precisely. They date broadly to the Bronze Age, though the type persisted across a long span of prehistory, and thousands have been identified across the island, making them one of the most frequently encountered monument types in the Irish archaeological record. That frequency does not diminish the quiet strangeness of finding two of them so close together in a single field.