It came to light only by accident, in 1976, when a cable-laying trench cut through a layer of burnt and cracked sandstone and granite stones stretching some thirteen metres in length and up to about forty centimetres thick. Once the work was done, the ground closed over it again, and today it cannot be seen at all where a cereal crop grows above it.

The feature belongs to a category of monument known as a burnt mound, one of the most common yet least-visited types of prehistoric site in Ireland. The general interpretation is that such mounds represent the accumulated debris of a cooking method in which stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the water to boiling point. The heat fractures the stones, and over time the cracked, fire-reddened material builds up into a mound. Thousands of these sites are scattered across the Irish landscape, most dating to the Bronze Age, though they are frequently identified only when groundworks expose them. The Lady's Island example is unremarkable in that sense, but its location beside a holy well adds a quiet layer of interest. Holy wells in Ireland are often found near sites of much older activity, the sacred geography of one era settling, perhaps not entirely by coincidence, over the traces of another.

There is nothing to see at the surface today, and the site sits within farmland where it remains buried beneath the soil. The holy well nearby, however, is a real and active place of local devotion, and the western shore of Lady's Island is accessible to those who know the area. The burnt mound itself is the kind of site that rewards knowing it is there rather than looking for it.