The mound measures roughly twelve metres by eight, rising less than a metre from the surrounding ground, and its contents are what make it interesting: heat-shattered stones and soil darkened with charcoal, the characteristic signature of prehistoric cooking.

Burnt mounds of this type, sometimes called fulacht fiadh in Irish, are among the most common Bronze Age monuments in Ireland, yet they remain poorly understood in terms of their precise function. The most widely accepted explanation is that they served as cooking sites, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil. The repeated heating and sudden cooling is what shatters the stones, and over time the discarded fragments accumulate into exactly the kind of low, crescent-shaped or oval mound found at Farnanes. This particular example came to light not through excavation but incidentally, when ground was being cleared for tree planting, which is not unusual; many such mounds across Ireland have only been formally recorded because forestry or agricultural work disturbed the surface.

The site now sits within an overgrown patch of briars and bushes inside the plantation, fenced off with that minimal barrier. It is a quietly odd thing, a cooking site that may be three or four thousand years old, marked out in a dark forest by a length of twine.