The site has been identified as a possible fulacht fia, a type of monument found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The classic form consists of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones surrounding a trough, where water was heated by dropping in stones that had been burned in a nearby hearth. The heated water could then be used for cooking, and possibly for other purposes including textile processing or bathing, though the precise function of fulachta fia has been a matter of ongoing debate among archaeologists.

The identification at Bishopslough came from Con Manning in 1986, passed on as a personal communication rather than a formal excavation report, which gives the record a provisional character. What once may have been a visible mound has since been worked over by agricultural activity, leaving the site essentially invisible at ground level within what is now improved farmland. Notably, a second possible fulacht fia has been recorded approximately 190 metres to the south-south-east, which is not unusual; these sites frequently appear in clusters, particularly near water sources or in low-lying ground, and reclaimed pasture of the kind described here was often marginal, waterlogged terrain in earlier periods, precisely the sort of landscape that seems to have attracted their construction.