They would have gone entirely unnoticed had the route of the M11 Gorey to Enniscorthy motorway not passed directly over them. Discovered during preparatory archaeological testing in January 2017, they sit at the headwaters of a small stream running along a slight northeast-to-southwest valley at Monroe, the kind of inconspicuous, sheltered spot that would have suited this type of work well.

Charcoal-making pits, sometimes called clamps, were used to burn wood slowly under reduced oxygen conditions, producing the dense, high-temperature fuel needed for metalworking and other industrial processes. The two pits at Monroe follow that pattern closely. The first, roughly 1.22 metres by 0.85 metres, contained layered fills of grey sand with charcoal flecks sitting above a charcoal-rich silty sand, which in turn overlay a reddened oxidised clay, the signature of repeated, controlled burning. About 24 metres to the west-southwest, a second flat-bottomed pit of similar dimensions preserved a fire-reddened clay base topped with a distinct charcoal layer and sealed by grey clayey silt. Both were excavated in November 2017 under the designation Monroe 6, directed by Kavanagh. No artefacts were recovered from either feature, which means the site cannot be dated precisely on current evidence, though the absence of any associated finds is not unusual for this type of functional, task-specific location. A third feature identified nearby is thought to be post-medieval drainage and was not included in the final interpretation.