The field is ordinary reclaimed pasture, and the ground gives nothing away. Sometime around 1974, a mound that had sat in this landscape for perhaps three thousand years was levelled, probably as part of routine agricultural improvement. What went under the soil was a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland. The typical form is a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone, accumulated beside a water trough where rocks were heated and dropped into water to cook food or, as some researchers now argue, to process hides or brew ale. The mound at Ballyhoolahan is gone, but its former presence was documented on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1937, where it appears plainly as a mound in the pasture.

The site belongs to a much denser cluster. A researcher named Bowman, writing in 1934, recorded no fewer than 19 fulachta fiadh within the same townland, a concentration that points to sustained prehistoric activity in this part of north Cork over a long period. A second example survives, or at least is recorded, roughly 60 metres to the north-east. The sheer number of these sites in a single townland is striking; even by Irish standards, where fulachta fiadh are among the most frequently encountered prehistoric monument types, 19 in one townland represents an unusual density. Most were probably in use during the Bronze Age, though the type spans a wide chronological range.