The exposed layer runs to a depth of 0.55 metres, and beyond that there is very little: no mound, no obvious surface feature, just the scrubland quietly closing in around it.

A fulacht fia, in its typical form, is a Bronze Age cooking place, usually identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of heat-shattered stone and charcoal beside a water source. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, a remarkably efficient system that left behind characteristic spreads of cracked, blackened stone. The Coolcoulaghta example has lost its mound entirely, which is not uncommon; centuries of farming, erosion, and vegetation growth have flattened many such sites across Ireland. What survives here is essentially the buried remnant, visible only where the stream has cut through and exposed it in cross-section. Ireland has one of the highest concentrations of fulachta fia in Europe, with thousands recorded, yet many exist in exactly this condition: known to archaeology, invisible to the casual eye, slowly being absorbed back into the landscape.