Measuring roughly 12 metres by 6.5 metres, it came to light not through planned excavation but through the preparatory testing carried out ahead of construction on the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass. Road schemes across Ireland have a long record of uncovering what centuries of farmland and turf had concealed, and this was one such discovery.

When archaeologists excavated the site in 2003, they found beneath the mound two subrectangular troughs, the defining feature of a fulacht fia. A fulacht fia, sometimes called a burnt mound, is a type of prehistoric cooking site common across Ireland and Britain: stones would be heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, and the repeated thermal shock eventually shattered the stones into the characteristic cracked debris that forms the mound. Small post-holes and stake-holes around the troughs at this site suggest that some kind of lightweight structure, perhaps a windbreak or a simple shelter, once stood nearby. Radiocarbon dating of material from one of the troughs placed its use between approximately 1750 and 1440 BC, squarely within the Bronze Age. The location itself is suggestive: the site sits to the north-east of a spring well, a proximity that would have been essential for keeping the troughs reliably supplied with water. Two further fulachtaí fia were identified close by, one about 10 metres to the west, another roughly 25 metres to the south-west, indicating that this hilltop saw repeated or sustained use for this kind of activity. A Neolithic pit found just 3.5 metres to the south adds yet another layer, suggesting people were drawn to this elevated spot even before the Bronze Age cooking stations were established.