It is the kind of feature that a farmer might plough around without giving it much thought, yet it represents one of the most common and most enigmatic monument types in the Irish archaeological record.

This is a fulacht fia, a term used for the horseshoe-shaped mounds of fire-cracked stone that are found in their thousands across Ireland, typically beside water sources. The accepted interpretation is that these were prehistoric cooking sites, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, though some researchers have proposed alternative uses including textile production or bathing. What makes the Carrigeen example particularly interesting is that it does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies immediately to the west, and between the two mounds the spread of burnt material is continuous, suggesting that whatever activity took place here happened repeatedly and across a broad area rather than at a single confined spot. The two sites appear less like separate installations and more like parts of the same sustained, recurring use of this stretch of ground beside the stream.