It measures eighteen metres long, thirteen and a half metres wide, and barely sixty centimetres high, and it is made almost entirely of burnt stone and charcoal-blackened soil. That composition is the clue to its purpose. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, after which meat could be cooked. The shattered, heat-cracked stones were discarded beside the trough, and over centuries of repeated use they accumulated into exactly the kind of low, dark mound visible here.

The site sits on the north-eastern bank of a small stream, which is entirely typical. Fulachtaí fia are almost always found close to running water, since a reliable water source was central to how they functioned. What makes this particular example slightly unusual is a depression at the south-eastern end of the mound, where burnt material has clearly been removed at some point, either by agricultural activity, deliberate excavation, or simple erosion. That hollow offers an accidental cross-section of sorts, hinting at the depth of accumulated material beneath the visible surface. The mound itself has survived well enough in the rough grazing that surrounds it, the kind of unimproved land that has inadvertently protected many low earthworks across Cork from ploughing.