This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, and the mound itself is the accumulated debris of centuries of use: burnt and shattered stone, discarded after repeated heating and quenching in water troughs. The mound at Urraghilmore measures roughly seven metres along its longer axis and barely half a metre in height, modest dimensions that nevertheless represent a significant and deliberately chosen spot.

Fulachtaí fia, as a class of monument, are almost always found close to water, and this example follows that pattern faithfully, positioned just beside a stream that would have provided the constant supply needed for the cooking method they represent. The basic principle involves heating stones in a fire until they are intensely hot, then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to the boil. The stones fracture and are discarded, building up over time into the horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound that survives today. What makes Urraghilmore particularly worth noting is that it does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies approximately 130 metres to the south-west, suggesting that this stretch of the Cork landscape was a place people returned to repeatedly, perhaps across many generations, to carry out the same ancient and practical work beside the same reliable water source.