The site belongs to a category of monument known as a burnt mound, one of the most common yet least understood archaeological features in the Irish landscape. The basic signature is always the same: stones fractured by thermal shock, mixed through soil made dark and greasy with charcoal, accumulated over what were likely many episodes of use.

The Coolymurraghue spread measures fourteen metres east to west and six metres north to south, a modest but reasonably well-preserved example lying within agricultural land. What exactly burnt mounds were used for has been debated for decades. The most widely accepted interpretation is that they served as outdoor cooking places, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, a method that leaves exactly the kind of debris seen here. Some researchers have proposed alternative functions including bathing, textile processing, or the brewing of ale, and it is possible that different sites served different purposes. What adds quiet interest to this particular location is that another possible burnt mound lies roughly fifty metres to the south-west, suggesting that this corner of Cork was returned to for similar activity on more than one occasion, or that a community found reason to maintain more than one such facility within easy reach of each other.