It is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dated to the Bronze Age. The usual interpretation is that such sites were used for boiling water by heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a trough; the cracked and burnt stones were then discarded into the characteristic horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound that survives today.

This example measures roughly twenty metres along its northwest to southeast axis and eleven metres across, rising to about eighty centimetres at its highest point. Its shape is broadly kidney-like, and there appears to be an opening of around four metres facing northeast, possibly where a trough or working area once sat. These details are modest but telling. The dimensions put it within the normal range for such monuments, though the suggested northeast-facing opening gives it a slight individuality. Thousands of fulachtaí fia have been recorded across Ireland, Cork among the richest counties for them, yet each one represents repeated episodes of use, fire-lighting, stone-heating, and disposal, accumulated into the mound that now remains.