It is the kind of site that disappears under crops and returns with the soil each autumn, its outline only legible from the surface when the earth is turned. The stones themselves are the evidence of a process repeated thousands of years ago, and they speak to a habit of cooking or industrial heating that was widespread across prehistoric Ireland.

Burnt mounds are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, yet they remain largely invisible to the casual eye. They form when stones are repeatedly heated and then plunged into water, either to heat the water itself or as part of some other thermal process; the thermal shock fractures the rock, and the broken, scorched fragments are raked aside and accumulate in a mound, typically crescent-shaped or oval, near the water source used. The positioning of this example, tucked towards the head of a shallow valley running from south-west to north-east and set beside an old stream bed, fits the pattern closely. Water was essential to whatever was happening here. A second burnt mound of the same general type lies roughly seventy-five metres to the west, which suggests the area was returned to repeatedly, or that separate groups were working in the same favourable spot across some span of time.