Fulacht fia, Meeneeshal, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
In a pasture field on the eastern bank of a stream in Meeneeshal, north Cork, a low grass-covered mound sits quietly in the landscape.
To most people passing by, it would look like nothing more than a slight rise in the ground. In fact, it is the remains of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The characteristic material beneath that grassy surface is burnt and shattered stone, the residue left behind after repeated cycles of heating rocks in a fire and then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the liquid to a boil.
What makes this particular site quietly interesting is its proximity to a second fulacht fia, recorded separately and lying only around twenty metres to the north. The pairing is not entirely unusual; these sites are often found clustered near reliable water sources, and the stream here would have been an obvious draw. The site was not recorded by Bowman, whose earlier survey work in the region forms part of the baseline against which subsequent archaeological inventories have been checked, meaning this example came to formal attention through later fieldwork compiled in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, published in 2000.