A fulacht fia is, in essence, a prehistoric cooking place, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone beside a trough and a water source. The stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled pit to bring it to the boil, a method that leaves behind the characteristic burnt and fragmented debris still visible today.

The Ballynaraha site lies on the western bank of a stream, which is exactly where these monuments are most commonly found, since a reliable water source was central to the whole process. A spread of burnt material has been recorded at the site, the residue of repeated heating and quenching over what may have been generations of use. What makes the location quietly notable is that a second fulacht fia sits roughly twenty metres to the north, suggesting that this particular stretch of streambank was a place people returned to, possibly over a long span of time. Fulachtaí fia are generally attributed to the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some examples have produced dates outside that range. Whether they were used solely for cooking, or also for bathing, textile processing, or other communal purposes, remains a matter of ongoing discussion among archaeologists.