What turned up near Kilcoole in 1998 was rather more interesting: two intact furnaces, buried and forgotten, their shapes preserved well enough to be measured and described in detail.

The furnaces came to light during archaeological monitoring of construction work for a new dwelling, a routine precaution that occasionally yields something worth stopping for. Furnace 1 was described as tadpole-shaped in plan, measuring 2.3 metres long, 0.48 metres wide, and reaching a maximum depth of 0.4 metres. Furnace 2 was pear-shaped, slightly smaller at 1.52 metres long and 0.56 metres wide, with a shallower depth of 0.26 metres. These kinds of ground-level or semi-sunken furnaces were used for smelting or working iron, with their elongated forms often designed to channel a draught and maintain the heat needed to process ore. The finds recovered alongside them help locate the site in time, if only loosely: fragments of iron slag point to metalworking activity, while a piece of burnt, glazed medieval pottery suggests the furnaces may date to the medieval period. Rounding out the assemblage were an animal tooth, a flint flake, and a struck flint pebble, small objects that hint at a working site with a longer or more varied history than the furnaces alone might suggest.