It measures roughly 24 metres east to west, 20 metres north to south, and rises to about one and a half metres at its highest point, which makes it a substantial example of its type, even in a partially overgrown state.

What lies beneath that vegetation is a fulacht fia, a term used by archaeologists for the horseshoe-shaped mounds of burnt stone and charcoal that are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, found in their thousands across the country. The standard interpretation is that they functioned as cooking sites, probably during the Bronze Age, though their precise purpose has been debated; some researchers have proposed uses ranging from textile processing to brewing. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire and then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the liquid to a boil. Repeated heating and quenching eventually shattered the stones, and it is this accumulated debris, dark and granular, that forms the characteristic mound. The location beside a stream and in marshy ground fits the pattern almost perfectly; proximity to water was not incidental but essential to how these sites functioned.