It came to light in 2002, when excavation ahead of construction revealed a mound of burnt stone and charred material measuring about eleven metres north to south and four and a half metres east to west, with a hearth and an oval trough preserved beneath it.

This type of site is known in Irish archaeology as a fulacht fia, a term referring to a class of prehistoric cooking place found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically beside a water source. The general principle involves heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the liquid to a boil, which accounts for the characteristic mounds of cracked and fire-shattered stone that survive at these sites. At Ballydowny, a radiocarbon date obtained from the lower of two burnt layers placed the activity somewhere between 1892 and 1540 BC, placing it firmly in the Middle Bronze Age. A cluster of four stake holes discovered about two metres west of the hearth offered a quieter detail: they may represent the remains of a windbreak, a simple structure of upright timbers that would have sheltered whoever was working the fire. It is a small, practical feature, but one that makes the human presence at the site feel immediate and legible across the millennia.