It is easy to mistake for a natural rise in the ground, but its shape and composition give it away as a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland and yet one of the least understood. These mounds are the accumulated debris of a cooking method in use for thousands of years, principally during the Bronze Age: stones were heated in fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the water to a boil, shattering with the thermal shock and building up, over repeated use, into the distinctive burnt-stone crescents that pepper the Irish countryside.

The mound at Lyradane measures roughly 8.9 metres east to west and 5.35 metres north to south, reaching a height of 0.95 metres, with its opening, about 2.1 metres wide, facing south. The western side is the tallest part, a slight asymmetry that likely reflects where the bulk of the discarded material accumulated over time. What makes the location quietly remarkable is that it does not stand alone. Another fulacht fia lies approximately 90 metres to the east, on the same south side of the same stream. The proximity of the two sites raises questions that archaeology has not fully settled: were they used simultaneously by different groups, or at different periods, or do they simply reflect how reliably this stretch of water drew people back across generations?