A fulacht fia, the term used for a type of ancient outdoor cooking place typically associated with Bronze Age activity, this one at Ballycullin exists as a low, thin earthen bank enclosing an oblong area roughly 31 metres long and 6 metres wide, with a deep drain running north to south along its eastern edge and feeding into a stream to the south. The combination of water management and enclosed shape is characteristic of the type, where heated stones would be dropped into a water-filled trough to cook meat or process other materials, with the fractured, fire-cracked stones gradually building up into the distinctive mound that usually marks these sites in the landscape. Here, that mound is simply not apparent to anyone walking past.

The site came to light not through dedicated archaeological fieldwork but as a consequence of infrastructure construction. During the excavation of the Cork to Dublin gas pipeline between 1981 and 1982, the ground was cut in a way that revealed the monument's presence, and it was subsequently recorded and published by Cleary and colleagues in 1987. That kind of accidental discovery is not unusual for fulachtaí fia; many hundreds have been identified across Ireland, often in low-lying or waterside positions exactly like this one, and pipeline and road schemes have been responsible for uncovering a considerable number of them. The forestry around this particular site now includes a formal buffer zone, measuring approximately 58 metres by 48 metres, which keeps the monument free from the root disturbance and ground pressure that plantation forestry can cause.