It measures just 3.4 metres in length and between 0.3 and 0.5 metres thick, yet it belongs to a class of monument found right across Ireland and Britain, one that has puzzled and intrigued archaeologists for generations.

Burnt mounds, sometimes called fulachtaí fia in Irish, are the residue of repeated heating. The general understanding is that stones were placed in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the water to a boil, with the cracked and spent stones tossed aside to form the characteristic mound. What exactly this process was used for, whether cooking, bathing, textile preparation, or something else entirely, remains a matter of debate. The Drumgold example first came to attention during a 2010 survey carried out ahead of the proposed M11 Gorey to Enniscorthy motorway route, documented by Kieran and Hayden. It might easily have been lost during construction, but when topsoil removal and related works got under way in 2016, monitoring of the site brought it back into focus. Rather than being destroyed, it was preserved in place, and it now sits within the motorway property at the edge of a run-off pond, not far from the stream bank where it was originally deposited by people who left no other trace of themselves here.