It is a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish landscape. These enigmatic structures, which number in the thousands across Ireland, are thought to date primarily from the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, and consist of a burnt mound of shattered, fire-cracked stone alongside a trough that would once have been sunk into the ground nearby. The working theory, broadly accepted though not without debate, is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to the boil, for purposes that may have included cooking, textile processing, or bathing.

The Kilmurry example belongs to a townland in the south of the county, in a part of Kilkenny that retains a quiet density of early archaeological features beneath its farmland. Fulachtaí fia tend to cluster near sources of water, since a reliable supply was essential to their function, and the low-lying ground characteristic of many Kilkenny townlands would have made them well-suited to this kind of activity. The burnt mounds themselves survive because the heat-shattered stone, once discarded into a crescent-shaped heap around the trough, proves remarkably durable over millennia. It does not decompose, does not get reused for building in the way that dressed stone does, and so it simply stays put, slowly greening over, waiting to be noticed.