It measures roughly fifteen metres east to west and just over fifteen and a half metres north to south, rising only thirty-two centimetres at its highest point. That modest hump is a fulacht fia, the archaeological term for a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland. The basic idea was simple: stones were heated in a fire, dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, and used to cook meat. The discarded, shattered stones accumulated over time into the characteristic horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds that survive today, often in wetland settings where water was reliably close at hand.

The site at Cooles is not an isolated curiosity. It belongs to a cluster of four such monuments in the immediate area, a concentration that suggests repeated or sustained use of this particular spot over time. Proximity to water was clearly the point, and the pond here would have provided exactly what the process required. The mound has not escaped wear: cattle have eroded its western side, and digging along the southern edge, near the pond, has cut into the deposit. Neither is unusual for monuments of this kind, which tend to be inconspicuous enough that they are disturbed without anyone quite realising what they are standing on.