The site is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stone beside a water source and a timber-lined trough into which heated stones were dropped to boil water. They are common enough as a category, yet each excavated example adds a small, specific piece to what we know about how people used the landscape long before written records began.

This particular example came to light in 2005, when archaeologist Graham Hull led an excavation under Ministerial Order No. A005 on the route of the proposed Limerick Southern Ring Road Phase II. The burnt-stone spread measured roughly seven metres by seven metres and was approximately 0.35 metres thick, situated at the northern margin of the River Shannon floodplain. At its centre sat a rectangular trough, 1.8 metres long, 0.9 metres wide, and 0.3 metres deep, which contained two poorly preserved worked timbers, the remnants of what would once have been a wooden lining. The burnt stone itself had been sealed beneath alluvium, river-deposited sediment, indicating that the site had at some point been flooded, which likely accounts for the poor condition of the organic material. The excavation results were recorded under reference number 962 in the 2005 volume of excavations.ie.

Because the site was uncovered as part of a road construction project, it no longer exists as a visible feature in the landscape; like many developement-led excavations, the archaeology was recorded and then the ground was built over. What remains is the documentary record, accessible through the excavations.ie database, which logs thousands of Irish archaeological interventions in searchable form. For anyone interested in the broader context, the Shannon floodplain in this part of Limerick is an area where prehistoric activity is well attested, and the proximity to water, a consistent feature of fulacht fia sites generally, is entirely in keeping with how these sites functioned.