It measures at least ten metres east to west. Without any context, it would be easy to walk past entirely. With context, it becomes one of at least nineteen similar features recorded in the same townland, making this quiet corner of north Cork unusually dense with the traces of prehistoric activity.

The mound is a fulacht fia, a type of monument found in enormous numbers across Ireland and dating mainly to the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC. The classic interpretation is that these were outdoor cooking sites: a trough would be filled with water, stones heated in a fire and then dropped into the trough to bring it to a boil, and meat cooked by immersion. The burnt and shattered stones, discarded after use, accumulated into the characteristic horseshoe or circular mounds that survive today. The slight depression visible on top of this example likely marks where the trough itself once sat. A researcher named Bowman recorded the townland's remarkable cluster of nineteen such sites as far back as 1934, suggesting Ballyhoolahan had drawn antiquarian attention long before modern survey methods were applied to it. A second fulacht fia lies roughly sixty metres to the south-west, close enough to suggest the two were part of the same landscape of repeated or communal use rather than isolated incidents.