A low circular mound once sat here, the kind of modest earthwork that can go unremarked for centuries, until, in the 1960s, it was levelled. What remained was a spread of burnt material across the ground, the faint signature of a fulacht fia.

A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically sited close to a water source. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, cooking meat or perhaps serving other purposes. The mounded shape that so often identifies these sites comes from the gradual accumulation of discarded, fire-cracked stone around the trough. At Gowlane, that mound is gone, lost to agricultural improvement, though the burnt spread it left behind still traces the outline of the original feature. The site sits immediately west of a stream, precisely the kind of location these monuments favour.