Fulacht fia, Commons, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Commons, Co. Clare

In a damp corner of County Clare, four prehistoric cooking sites cluster within thirty metres of one another, sitting low in rush-covered ground where water moves through the land on its own slow schedule.

The site at Commons is one of several fulachta fia in the area, and the grouping alone makes it quietly unusual. A fulacht fia is a type of Bronze Age cooking or processing site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped or subcircular mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the accumulated debris of repeated episodes of heating stones and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. They are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, yet they remain poorly understood, and finding four of them in close proximity on a single patch of wet ground raises questions that archaeology has not fully answered.

The mound at Commons is modest in scale, roughly five metres east to west and four metres north to south, rising to no more than half a metre at its highest point. It sits on semi-karst terrain, the kind of limestone-influenced ground where water does not always behave predictably, pooling or draining according to fractures and hollows beneath the surface. A spring was marked just to the north-east on the 1897 Ordnance Survey twenty-five-inch plan, and the surrounding land shows evidence of periodic surface flooding. That water source would have been essential for a fulacht fia to function. When an inspection was carried out in 1999, it was noted that the mound itself was being gradually washed away by this same flooding, a certain irony given that proximity to water was presumably what made the spot attractive in the first place. The site was reported by Tom Coffey and appeared on the Geological Survey of Ireland map before being formally listed in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996. Burnt material remains visible within the grass-covered mound, a faint physical trace of fires lit here perhaps three or four thousand years ago.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Fulacht fia, Commons, Co. Clare. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 50 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.