The spread measures roughly 7.5 metres north to south and 4 metres east to west, rising only about 15 centimetres above the surrounding pasture. It was the building work itself that brought the site to light: when the landowner dug the foundations, a large mound of burnt stones and dark earth came up with the spoil, the kind of accumulation that tends to go unnoticed until a mechanical digger makes it impossible to ignore.

What makes the find particularly interesting is its proximity to a possible fulacht fia located roughly 65 metres to the south-east. A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones beside a trough, where water was heated by dropping in stones that had been fired in a hearth nearby. They are common across Ireland and are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though their exact function has been debated, with proposals ranging from communal cooking to textile processing or even brewing. The burnt spread at Drombohilly may be related to the same tradition, representing either a separate episode of similar activity or an outlying deposit connected to the nearby site. The two features together suggest that this quiet river valley slope was a place of repeated, purposeful use at some point in prehistory, even if the details of what exactly went on there remain, for now, beyond recovery.