It measures roughly eleven metres east to west and seven metres north to south, rising only sixteen centimetres above the surrounding ground. What gives it away, to anyone who knows what to look for, is what it is made of: burnt and fire-cracked stone, blackened and heat-shattered, accumulated over what may have been centuries of repeated use.

This is a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, and one of the most enigmatic. The name is sometimes translated loosely as "deer roast" or "cooking place of the wild animal", and the dominant theory holds that these sites were used for cooking by immersion, a method in which stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the contents to a boil. The characteristic horseshoe or oval mound that remains is essentially a discard heap, the broken and spent stones tossed aside after each heating. Most fulachtaí fia date to the Bronze Age, broadly spanning from around 2000 to 500 BC, though the type persisted in some form beyond that. Their proximity to water is consistent across the archaeological record, and the stream beside this example fits that pattern precisely. Alternative theories have proposed uses ranging from textile dyeing to bathing, and debate among archaeologists continues.