When construction work disturbed the low-lying ground near a stream at Castleredmond, it exposed a fulacht fia, one of the Bronze Age cooking monuments found in considerable numbers across Ireland. The defining feature of a fulacht fia is a trough, usually set close to a water source, into which stones were heated in fire and then dropped to bring the water to a boil. The scorched, shattered stones that accumulated from repeated use form the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound that survives above ground at many such sites.

Partial excavation in September 1982, published subsequently by Doody, revealed a rectangular pit measuring roughly 2.4 metres east to west, 1.6 metres north to south, and 0.6 metres deep. The precision of its construction set it apart from simpler examples. Earth-cut slots at three of its corners and a substantial post hole at each corner point strongly to a wooden lining, a fitted timber trough rather than a simple hole in the ground. Shortly after it went out of use, the pit was deliberately filled with burnt material, and by the time of excavation it was no longer taking in groundwater, suggesting the surrounding soil conditions had changed over the millennia. Two further pits of comparable size were found nearby, though neither showed any evidence of a lining, and both were self-filling with groundwater in the way a working trough would have been. No objects were recovered from any of the three pits that could be dated to the period of their use, leaving the precise chronology of the site dependent on its form and context rather than finds.