Measuring roughly twenty metres on its north-east to south-west axis and ten metres across, it sits in what is now tillage land, on the eastern side of a pond that has since been infilled. Easy to pass without a second glance, it is the kind of site that rewards knowing what you are looking at.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in great numbers across Ireland, particularly in low-lying, waterlogged ground near streams or ponds. The typical arrangement involved a trough, usually timber-lined, filled with water and heated by dropping fire-scorched stones into it; those stones, cracked and blackened by repeated use, accumulated over time into the characteristic mound of burnt material that survives today. The kidney or horseshoe shape is common to the type, formed by the gradual build-up of discarded stone around a central working area. Most fulachtaí fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some have produced earlier or later dates. The association with water is consistent here too; the now-infilled pond beside the Ballygown site would once have made this a practical location for whatever activity, whether cooking, textile processing, or something else entirely, was being carried out.