The spread of burnt material measures roughly 20 metres north to south and 16 metres east to west, its shape preserved by centuries of accumulated charcoal, fire-cracked stone, and organic debris.

A fulacht fia is, in its simplest form, a prehistoric cooking site, typically consisting of a mound of heat-shattered stone beside a trough, often timber-lined, into which water was brought and heated by dropping in fire-heated stones. The process is surprisingly efficient; experiments have shown water can be brought to a boil within minutes using this method. The characteristic horseshoe or oval mound of discarded burnt stone is what survives most readily in the ground, and Ireland has thousands of recorded examples, with West Cork particularly well supplied. They cluster, almost without exception, near water sources, which explains the presence of this one on the slope beside a stream. Most date to the Bronze Age, broadly speaking the period from around 2500 to 500 BC, though some examples fall outside that range. What exactly they were used for beyond cooking remains a matter of genuine archaeological discussion, with proposals ranging from textile processing to communal bathing.