The burnt mound measured 7.5 metres by 9 metres, and a timber-lined, bowl-shaped trough sat just to its west. These are the signature features of a fulacht fia, a type of site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically interpreted as an outdoor cooking place where water was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into a trough until the contents reached boiling point. The stones, cracked and blackened by repeated heating, accumulate around the trough into the characteristic horseshoe or spread of burnt material that survives in the ground for millennia.

Archaeologist Donald Murphy excavated the site in 2000, and a charcoal sample taken from the trough was radiocarbon dated to between 971 and 816 BC, placing it firmly in the Late Bronze Age. Beneath the burnt spread, excavators found a second trough, suggesting the site had seen more than one phase of use, and below that lay an extensive layer of peat, indicating that the landscape here was once considerably wetter and boggier than it appears today. The presence of peat is consistent with the broader pattern of fulacht fia distribution across Ireland; these sites tend to cluster near water sources and low-lying ground, since reliable access to water was essential to how they functioned. The fact that four such monuments were found in proximity at Richmond suggests the area was returned to repeatedly over time, or that several groups were using adjacent sites in the same period.