A fulacht fia is a prehistoric cooking place, typically consisting of a mound of heat-shattered stone accumulated over repeated use, a trough for holding water, and a nearby water source. The stone was heated in a fire, dropped into the water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and meat was cooked in the resulting heat. Thousands of these sites survive across Ireland, most dating to the Bronze Age, and yet for all their abundance they remain imperfectly understood.

The remains at Farranalough take the form of a spread of burnt material measuring roughly 12 metres from east-southeast to west-northwest, and about 32 metres from north-northeast to south-southwest, sitting in land that was, at the time of recording, recently reclaimed from scrub. A stream runs approximately six metres to the north-northwest, which fits the standard pattern for these sites almost exactly; proximity to a reliable water source was a practical necessity. The scrub clearance that brought this spread to attention is itself a small reminder of how many such sites lie quietly beneath vegetation, unrecorded until the land around them changes.