At the top of an east-facing slope in Kilbrack, County Waterford, a field occasionally reveals something ancient when the plough turns the soil: a broad spread of burnt and broken stone, roughly thirty-two metres across, with two denser concentrations of charred material within it. For most of the year it is invisible, absorbed into ordinary farmland. Only cultivation brings it temporarily to the surface, and with it the faint outline of activity that took place here perhaps three or four thousand years ago.

The two concentrated areas within the spread suggest the presence of two fulachta fiadh, a term used for a type of prehistoric cooking or heating site found in great numbers across Ireland. The typical fulacht fiadh consists of a mound of fire-cracked stone accumulated beside a trough or water source, the result of repeatedly heating stones in a fire and dropping them into water to raise its temperature. The process is slow, labour-intensive, and leaves behind an unmistakable signature: discoloured, shattered stone that no longer has any use and is simply piled up. The proximity of a pond at Kilbrack fits this pattern closely, since a reliable water source was essential to the whole operation. Whether the two concentrations represent two separate periods of use, two distinct working areas functioning at the same time, or simply the way the material has shifted and settled over millennia, is difficult to say without excavation.