These low, crescent-shaped mounds of fire-cracked stone and charred earth are the debris of a Bronze Age cooking method: stones were heated in a fire, dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and then discarded once they shattered from the thermal shock. Repeat this process over years or generations and the spent stones accumulate into a mound, sometimes quite a substantial one. They cluster near streams and boggy ground, which provided the water the process required, and Knockyrourke fits that pattern of quiet, low-lying locations that have kept these features intact for three thousand years or more.

Burnt mounds are known in Irish as fulachtaí fia, a term sometimes translated loosely as "deer roasts", though the cooking-pit interpretation is now the most widely accepted explanation for their function, with some archaeologists also suggesting uses related to bathing, textile processing, or brewing. They belong predominantly to the Middle Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 900 BC, making the mound at Knockyrourke a remnant of activity from a period long before any written record of this part of Cork. The specific history of this particular mound, its dimensions, its condition, and any excavation it may have undergone, remains to be fully documented in the public record.