They appear as low, horseshoe-shaped mounds, often dark with charred and fire-cracked stone, and they cluster near water. The one at Ballinrea in County Cork is a quiet example of this widespread but still not fully understood class of monument.

The term fulacht fia, sometimes translated loosely as "cooking place of the deer" or associated with the mythological Fianna, refers to a type of ancient outdoor cooking or processing site. The typical arrangement involves a hearth for heating stones, a wooden trough sunk into the ground and filled with water, and a mound of discarded burnt stone that builds up over repeated use. Heating stones in a fire and dropping them into the water-filled trough would bring the water to a boil surprisingly quickly, and experiments in experimental archaeology have confirmed the method is effective for cooking meat. Some researchers have proposed additional uses, from textile processing to bathing, though cooking remains the most widely accepted primary function. The majority of fulachtaí fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some have earlier or later origins. Cork is one of the counties with the highest concentrations of these sites in Ireland, and Ballinrea sits within that broader landscape of prehistoric activity along the southern coastline.