That is more or less what happened at Lisnagar Demesne in County Cork, where pre-construction testing ahead of the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass turned up two spreads of heat-shattered stones and darkened, charcoal-enriched soil, the unmistakable signature of a fulacht fia.

A fulacht fia is a type of Bronze Age cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland. The typical arrangement involves a trough, filled with water, into which fire-heated stones were dropped to bring the water to boiling point. The stones fracture with repeated heating and cooling, and the mounds of cracked, fire-blackened debris they leave behind are often all that survives. Excavation at Lisnagar in 2003 confirmed the pattern here in some detail: four linear pits, two shallow oval pits, and a rectangular trough measuring 2.3 metres by 1.5 metres, with a maximum depth of 0.35 metres, all containing the characteristic heat-shattered stone and charcoal-rich fill. One detail slightly complicates the picture. Slag was found beneath the stones inside the trough, hinting at metalworking activity, though no wider evidence of ironworking came to light. Whether the trough was briefly repurposed, or whether the slag arrived there by some other route, remains unclear. A second fulacht fia lies roughly fifty metres to the south-south-west, on the far side of a stream, which suggests this stretch of ground was in fairly regular prehistoric use, the stream presumably providing the water supply essential to both sites.