It was entered into the Sites and Monuments Record in 1991 and again into the Record of Monuments and Places in 1997 as a fulacht fia, the Irish term for a type of prehistoric burnt mound typically associated with the heating of water by dropping fire-heated stones into a trough. Thousands of these sites survive across Ireland, usually identified by the characteristic dark, charcoal-rich soil and fire-cracked stone that accumulates over centuries of use. The problem here is that when the site was actually inspected in 1997, neither of those defining features was present.

The original classification came from a local source rather than fieldwork, and when investigators visited, what they found was simply a low, grass-covered rise at the base of a gentle northeast-facing slope, the ground levelling out towards a stream about twenty metres away. The proximity to water is suggestive; fulacht fia sites are almost always found near a reliable water source, and that detail fits the pattern well enough to keep the question open. But without the burnt soil or the cracked stone, the mound cannot be confirmed as a fulacht fia, and its true nature remains uncertain. It may be prehistoric, it may not. The stream nearby, the slope above, the slight swelling of the ground, all of it adds up to something that looks the part without quite being able to prove it.