Fulacht fia, Fahee, Co. Clare

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Fahee, Co. Clare

In a field that old Ordnance Survey maps bluntly labelled 'Liable to Floods', a low mossy hummock sits at the north-eastern edge of damp rough grazing near Fahee in County Clare.

It measures roughly eight metres north to south and six metres east to west, rising to no more than about eighty centimetres at its south-western end, and it merges so gradually into the slightly higher ground to the east that a passing walker could easily miss it entirely. What it almost certainly represents is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically Bronze Age in origin, formed from the mounded debris of fire-cracked stones that were heated and dropped into water-filled troughs to bring them to the boil.

The location follows a pattern well recognised at these sites. Fulachtaí fia are almost always found close to water and in low-lying, seasonally wet ground, and this one is no exception, with a stream running west and then south-west in its immediate vicinity. A second fulacht fia lies a short distance to the north-north-east, suggesting this corner of Clare saw repeated use over time, or perhaps simultaneous activity at closely spaced sites. The monument was identified on the basis of a map annotation made by Tom Coffey in 1994 and was formally listed in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996.

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Pete F
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