It measures roughly fourteen metres along its longer axis and rises only about sixty centimetres from the surrounding ground, so a person could walk past it without a second glance. What makes it worth pausing over is what lies beneath the sod: heat-shattered stone and soil dark with charcoal, the characteristic remains of a fulacht fia.

A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site, found in great numbers across Ireland and typically associated with the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, a process that gradually cracked and blackened the stones. Over time, those discarded fragments accumulated into a mound, often horseshoe-shaped or, as here, roughly D-shaped. The site at Barnarobin sits immediately west of a north-south flowing stream, which would have provided a ready water source. What gives this particular spot an added dimension is that a second fulacht fia lies just fourteen metres to the west-northwest, within the same townland. Two such sites in such close proximity raises quiet questions about how intensively this stretch of upland was once used, and by whom. A farm track now cuts across the eastern edge of the mound, a reminder of how casually the modern landscape has come to rest on top of the ancient one.