It measures twenty-nine metres long, eleven metres wide, and just over a metre high, an elliptical hump in the landscape that has been quietly sitting there since prehistory. What gives it away, to those who know what to look for, is the blackened, fire-cracked stone that makes up its bulk.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking or heating site found in enormous numbers across Ireland and Britain, with particular concentrations in Munster. The name, roughly translating from Old Irish as something like "cooking place of the deer," refers to a Bronze Age technology that was both simple and effective. A trough dug into the ground was filled with water, and stones heated in a nearby fire were dropped in to bring it to the boil. Over repeated use, the shattered, heat-stressed stones were raked out and piled up around the trough, gradually building the characteristic horseshoe or elliptical mound that archaeologists now recognise as the signature of the site. The positioning here is typical: boggy ground would have made it easy to dig a watertight trough, and the proximity to both a well and a stream meant a reliable water supply. A possible opening facing west may indicate where the working area, and the trough itself, once sat.