It is easy to miss, and easier still to mistake for a natural feature of the ground. But the dark, crumbly material that makes up the mound tells a different story: this is a fulacht fia, the remains of a prehistoric cooking site, and it has been accumulating its burnt debris for perhaps three or four thousand years.

Fulachtaí fia (the plural form) are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, yet they remain genuinely puzzling. The typical interpretation is that they were used for boiling water, most likely for cooking meat. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled; the cracked and shattered stones were then discarded in a heap nearby, forming the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and blackened material that survives today. The presence of a well immediately beside the Knockanevin example is consistent with this pattern, since fulachtaí fia are almost always found near a reliable water source, whether a stream, a spring, or, as here, a well. The mound at Knockanevin is described as low and ill-defined, which suggests it may be somewhat worn or disturbed, its original shape softened over the centuries by grazing animals and the slow settling of the ground.