In a pasture at Walshtown More in County Cork, the turning of a plough once exposed what looked to be a burnt mound, one of those low, kidney-shaped heaps of fire-cracked stone and charcoal that Bronze Age communities left behind, most likely from repeated episodes of heating water by dropping hot stones into a trough. They are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, found near streams and boggy ground across the country, and the location here fits the pattern precisely: the site lies roughly fifteen metres south of a stream.

By 2002, however, there was nothing left to see. The ploughing that had revealed the deposit had apparently also disturbed or dispersed it, and no visible remains could be found on the surface. This kind of archaeological ghost is not unusual. Burnt mounds were never imposing structures, and many exist now only as discolourations in soil or as entries in county inventories, recorded on the basis of a single observation that could not be repeated. Whether the Walshtown More deposit was ever substantial enough to qualify as a true burnt mound, or whether it represented something more fragmentary, was never established with certainty; the site was always described as a possible example rather than a confirmed one.