Low, horseshoe-shaped mounds of fire-cracked stone and dark, charred earth, they represent a Bronze Age cooking technology, or possibly a bathing and brewing tradition, in which water was heated by dropping fire-heated stones into a trough. The mound itself is simply the accumulated debris of that repeated process, stones discarded after they shattered from thermal shock. This example at Killabraher, in north County Cork, sits in rough grazing ground to the north-east of a stream, an unremarkable spot until you register what the soil beneath your feet actually represents.

The mound is oval in plan, measuring roughly 13.8 metres north to south and 13.2 metres east to west, and rising only about half a metre above the surrounding ground. Three or four small depressions are visible on its surface, most likely the result of relatively recent digging rather than anything prehistoric. What makes the location slightly more interesting is that it does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies approximately 100 metres to the north-east, suggesting that this stretch of Cork farmland saw sustained or repeated activity during the Bronze Age, with people returning to the same watery, stream-side ground over what may have been generations.