It was not a hearth, not a kiln, and not a grave. It was simply a hole in the ground that had been burned, packed with charcoal-rich deposits, and ringed with the ghosts of wooden stakes, and nobody is entirely certain what it was for.

The pit, measuring 6.25 metres by 3.25 metres and reaching a depth of 2.18 metres, was found at a place called Stag Park during archaeological investigations carried out ahead of road construction. The basal fills, the lowest layers of sediment at the bottom, were dark with charcoal and showed evidence of burning where it happened, in place, rather than material being brought in from elsewhere. Around the upper edges of the pit, two groups of stake-holes survived: seventeen in total, divided between the northern and southern sides. The southern cluster held eleven tightly spaced holes of modest diameter, while the six on the northern side were larger and more widely spread. These stake-holes are the traces of timber uprights, posts or poles driven into the earth, though what structure they supported, or whether they formed some kind of frame over the pit, remains a matter for interpretation. Two further pits and a single isolated stake-hole were also recorded nearby. The work was published by Sutton in 2006 and 2007, and the site sits within a broader landscape that road development across Ireland has repeatedly brought to light, often only briefly, before the ground is sealed again.