These features, found widely across Ireland, are among the more enigmatic survivals of prehistoric life. The prevailing theory is that they were cooking sites, where stones were heated in fire and dropped into water-filled troughs to bring the water to a boil, the cracked and blackened stones then discarded into a spreading heap. What exactly was being cooked, or whether the troughs served other purposes entirely, remains a subject of debate among archaeologists.

The portion uncovered here was partial; the excavation, directed by Ellen O'Carroll under the reference E3225, exposed only the eastern edge of the burnt spread, measuring 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres and just 0.15 metres in depth. The main body of the mound remained visible beyond the road boundary, sitting in the adjoining western field, largely undisturbed. That detail alone gives the site an unusual character: the road scheme sliced through the margin of something much larger, leaving the bulk of it intact just a field away. The site is thought to date to the Bronze Age, placing it somewhere in the broad span between roughly 2500 and 500 BC.