What is recorded here

Clear water, hot stones, dripping flesh: the fulacht fia at Corkbeg cooked or cleaned with brute heat. Men built it, tended it, drank beside it, and left it to the marsh. The oil refinery nearly erased the proof, but the shattered stones and charcoal soil still mark the place where human hands made water steam and marbled fat separate.

In a low-lying marshy area that had been disturbed by modern land drainage works. A shallow irregular spread (7.2m N-S; 5.3m E-W; D 0.01-0.02m) of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil was discovered in 2007 during archaeological testing in advance of the construction of a gas-fired electricity generating station at Whitegate oil refinery. Excavation revealed three pits cut into the subsoil. One of these, which was rectangular in shape and located at the N end of the spread, was interpreted as a trough. The other two pits, which were found to the W of the spread, contained inclusions of both burnt and unburnt stones and were interpreted as the remains of troughs or of storage pits. Another fulacht fia (CO088-123----) c. 16m to the SE was also excavated. (pers. comm. Tony Cummins) The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 5' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). Date of upload: 22 December 2009

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