Fulacht fia, Lackareagh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Settlement Sites
At the north-western edge of a small pond in a reclaimed field in Lackareagh, County Clare, a low horseshoe-shaped mound sits quietly in the landscape, its purpose belonging to a world several thousand years removed from the present.
This is a fulacht fia, a type of Bronze Age cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically identified by a crescent or horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones beside a water source. The stones would have been heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, and the discarded, shattered stones gradually accumulated into the distinctive mound we see today.
The Lackareagh example was identified by Tom Coffey around 1994 and is considered well-preserved. The mound measures 9.2 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 7 metres north-west to south-east, and it opens to the south-east, enclosing an internal space roughly 2.5 metres by 1.8 metres. The external height reaches about 0.6 metres, which is modest but coherent enough to read clearly in the field. What makes its position particularly interesting is the cluster of related monuments nearby: a second fulacht fia lies approximately 90 metres to the north-west, and a cashel, a stone-walled circular enclosure typically associated with early medieval settlement and livestock management, sits about 140 metres in the same direction. Whether these features were ever in use at the same time is not known, but their proximity suggests this corner of Clare was a focal point of activity across different periods.