The site is a fulacht fia, a type of Bronze Age cooking or processing site found across Ireland in considerable numbers, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone alongside one or more water-filled troughs. At Cherrywood, though, the mound had long since been levelled by later activity, and the site only came to light in 1998 when topsoil monitoring during development work revealed the full extent of what lay beneath: a spread measuring 24 metres north to south and 9 metres wide, with eight circular or subcircular unlined troughs ranging from 1.2 to 2 metres in diameter and between 0.3 and 0.8 metres deep. Several of those troughs appear to have been cut directly into natural springs, which would have made the site self-replenishing and well chosen.

The finds recovered during excavation sketch out a remarkably detailed picture of prehistoric activity. The lowest levels produced undecorated coarseware pottery of the Lough Gur Class II type, specifically the Knockadoon variant, characterised by simple rims, a tulip-shaped profile, and flat bases; this ware is broadly associated with the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in Ireland. A single sherd of what may be Beaker pottery was also recovered at this level, and the main burnt deposit contained sherds of AOC comb-incised Beaker ware alongside more of the coarseware. Beaker pottery, named for its distinctive vessel shape and associated with a continent-wide cultural tradition, appears in Ireland from roughly 2400 BC onwards. Alongside the ceramics, excavators found flint flakes, hammerstones, and worked debris, as well as three intact flint javelin heads measuring 62, 78, and 118 millimetres, an unfinished fourth, and a leaf-shaped arrowhead of 45 millimetres. Scrapers and butchered animal bone, including a single ovicaprid tooth that could be securely linked to the fulacht fia phase itself, rounded out the assemblage.

The site is not accessible as a standing monument; its significance is archaeological rather than visual, and nothing of the original mound or troughs survives above ground in any meaningful form. The records of the excavation, attributed to O Neill (1999) and compiled for the Archaeological Survey of Ireland by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy, remain the primary means of engaging with what was found here. For anyone interested in the broader pattern of prehistoric settlement along the Dublin coastline, Cherrywood is worth knowing about precisely because it arrived so quietly, emerging from routine monitoring rather than a dedicated dig, and because the density of its trough system and the variety of its finds make it more complex than a typical example of its type.