It is, by most appearances, unremarkable agricultural ground. But that dark stain in the soil marks the remains of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in large numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The characteristic mound of fire-cracked stone forms when rocks are heated repeatedly in open fires and then plunged into water-filled troughs to bring the liquid to a boil, the shattered, heat-spent stones gradually accumulating into a horseshoe-shaped heap around the trough.

The site came to light around 1961, not through formal excavation but through land reclamation work, the kind of practical agricultural clearance that has inadvertently uncovered prehistoric remains across the Irish countryside for generations. When the ground was broken, a wooden trough was found in association with the burnt material, the sort of vessel that would have been sunk into the earth and filled with water before the heated stones were dropped in. Wooden troughs of this kind rarely survive, given the conditions required for organic preservation, which makes the Lyradane discovery a particularly useful one, even if the circumstances of its uncovering were unplanned. The burnt spread itself, still visible in the ploughed field at the time it was recorded, gives a reasonable sense of the scale of activity that once took place on that quiet east-facing slope.