This one in Ballymore, County Wexford, does none of that. Lying along the north bank of a small east-west stream, it surfaces only when a plough turns the earth, briefly revealing an area of broken and burnt stones embedded in black clay before vanishing again beneath pasture.

What the plough uncovers belongs to a class of prehistoric feature known as a burnt mound, essentially the accumulated debris of a cooking method used across Ireland and Britain during the Bronze Age. The typical process involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to the boil, then discarding the cracked and blackened stones nearby. Over time, these dumps of fire-shattered rock built up into distinctive mounds, often found beside streams or boggy ground where water was close to hand. The black clay surrounding the stones at Ballymore is characteristic of the waterlogged, organic-rich soil that tends to preserve such deposits. A second burnt mound lies roughly 150 metres to the west, suggesting that this stretch of streamside ground saw repeated or prolonged use, though whether the two sites are broadly contemporary or represent activity across different periods is difficult to say without excavation.