It measures eight metres long, six metres wide, and barely rises forty centimetres above the surrounding ground, yet its horseshoe shape and burnt contents are immediately recognisable to archaeologists as a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types found across Ireland.

A fulacht fia is, in essence, the remains of an ancient cooking or heating site. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire, then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The stones fractured with the repeated heating and cooling, and the broken, fire-cracked fragments were raked out and piled to the sides, gradually forming the characteristic horseshoe mound that survives today. The opening at Woodfield, roughly four metres wide, is where the trough would have sat. The proximity to a well is not incidental; access to a reliable water source was a practical requirement, and fulachta fiadh are frequently found close to streams, springs, or boggy ground. Most date to the Bronze Age, broadly spanning from around 2000 BC to 500 BC, though some sites were used across longer periods. What they were used for beyond cooking remains genuinely debated, with proposals ranging from textile processing to bathing.