They are gone now, ploughed out of existence sometime after the mid-1970s, and no visible trace remains. What makes their disappearance quietly melancholy is not just the loss of the monuments themselves, but the discovery made during the levelling of one of them: a metal object described as boat-shaped, whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Fulachta fiadh (the singular is fulacht fia) are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, yet they remain somewhat mysterious. They typically appear as horseshoe-shaped or kidney-shaped mounds of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the accumulated debris of repeated episodes of heating water, most likely for cooking. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled. The cracked, spent stones were raked aside, building up the characteristic mound over time. The four sites at Killoughane followed this familiar form, described locally as horseshoe-shaped mounds of burnt stone arranged along the boggy riverside ground beside the Gaddagh. What was unusual was that metal object recovered during demolition. Whether it was prehistoric, medieval, or something else entirely is now impossible to say; it has passed out of record entirely.