This is the essence of a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, and the site at Castleview left no surface trace at all before excavation crews moved in ahead of construction in 1999. The ground simply looked like ground.

Once the topsoil was stripped, a D-shaped scatter of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil emerged, measuring roughly 10.46 metres east to west, spreading across what turned out to be two conjoined unlined pits. The western pit was circular, about 1.45 metres across and half a metre deep; the eastern was slightly larger and subcircular, the two separated by a stone slab roughly 0.6 metres long. Both were packed with the same dark, fire-cracked material that defines these sites, the physical residue of a process repeated over many sessions across perhaps generations of use. Radiocarbon dating placed activity here in the Late Bronze Age. Around the trough, excavators found three small stake-holes to the south and a post-hole near the northern edge, suggesting some kind of lightweight structure once stood nearby, possibly a shelter or frame for the work. Four further pits were identified in the vicinity, the largest of which may itself have served as an additional trough. A modern land drain running north to south had cut through the western side of the feature, a reminder that sites like this are quietly erased by later activity long before archaeology arrives. What made this particular excavation more layered was the discovery, immediately to the east, of a possible corn-drying kiln from the early medieval period, along with two linear features interpreted as flues. The same patch of ground on Little Island had been put to use, apparently independently, across a span of well over a thousand years.