Fulacht fia, Shrone Beg, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Shrone Beg, Co. Kerry

In a patch of marshy pasture in Shrone Beg, a low horseshoe-shaped mound sits on a gentle south-facing slope, its opening pointed west and its contents, essentially a heap of fire-cracked stone and charred material, suggesting ancient activity that was neither settlement nor burial.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically associated with the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation involves heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and cooking meat in the resulting heat. The mounds that survive are the discarded residue of that process, stones shattered by repeated thermal shock piled up over generations of use.

This particular example was recorded in the 1940s, when it sat on land belonging to a Thomas O'Connor, and its existence was noted in what is known as the Schools Manuscript, a large folklore and local knowledge collection gathered by schoolchildren across Ireland during that period. The mound itself is modest but legible: roughly 8.5 metres north to south, 6.2 metres east to west, and standing about half a metre high, with a western-facing opening approximately 2 metres across. It has eroded partially over time, as these earthworks tend to do in soft, wet ground, but its horseshoe form remains recognisable. To the south-west, the twin rounded hills known as the Paps of Dana are visible from the site, a pair of landmarks long associated with the goddess Anu in Irish mythology, their profiles a quiet reminder of how densely layered the landscape around here actually is.

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