Fulacht fia, Loumanagh, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Loumanagh, Co. Cork

In the pasture at Loumanagh in north Cork, a prehistoric cooking site lies completely invisible beneath the grass.

There is no mound to photograph, no marker post, no interpretive panel. It is, by every practical measure, gone from view, and yet it is recorded, mapped, and known.

The site belongs to a category of monument found in enormous numbers across Ireland: the fulacht fia, a type of Bronze Age cooking place typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal-blackened earth. The working principle, as best understood, involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, a method that leaves behind a distinctive spread of shattered, heat-stressed rock. The Loumanagh example was visible enough in 1937 to be recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of that year as a mound, which suggests it had reasonable surface presence within living memory. At some point between that survey and more recent inspection, whatever raised profile it once had has been levelled, whether by ploughing, grazing pressure, or simple settling, leaving no visible trace on the surface.

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Pete F
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