It measures roughly six metres across and stands no more than thirty centimetres high, a modest rise in the ground that most walkers would pass without a second glance. What makes it remarkable is what it is made of: burnt and fire-cracked stone, the accumulated debris of repeated heating and cooling over what are likely to have been many centuries of prehistoric use.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking or heating site found in great numbers across Ireland, particularly from the Bronze Age onwards. The basic method involved heating stones in a fire, then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the water rapidly to the boil. The cracked, heat-shattered stones were raked out after use and piled to one side, and it is precisely these discarded stones that now form the low horseshoe or circular mounds we see scattered across the Irish countryside. What is quietly striking about the Glenleigh example is that it does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies roughly thirty metres to the south-west, suggesting that this particular slope was a place of repeated or sustained activity rather than a single isolated episode. Whether the two sites were in use at the same time or represent different periods of activity is not something the ground surface alone can answer.