When fieldwalkers surveyed the ploughed route in 1999, they found a spread of burnt sandstones sitting in boggy ground at the edge of a natural ridge near Richmond, the physical remains of a fulacht fia that had lain quietly beneath the surface for millennia.

A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site, found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a trough, a hearth, and a mound of fire-cracked stone. The stones were heated and dropped into water to bring it to a boil, and repeated heating and rapid cooling caused them to fracture and blacken. Over time the discarded stones accumulated into the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound. At Richmond, that accumulation measured roughly fifteen metres by twenty-five metres, a substantial spread suggesting repeated use over time. The boggy, low-lying ground beside the ridge would have provided a reliable water source, exactly the kind of setting these sites tend to favour. Roughly twenty metres to the northwest, the same survey turned up a portion of a stone axe, a separate but telling find that points to human activity in the area reaching back into the prehistoric period.