It measures roughly twelve metres east to west and eleven metres north to south, rising about a metre above the surrounding earth. That modest rise conceals a considerable age. The mound is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in large numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a trough, a hearth, and a spread of heat-shattered, fire-cracked stone that builds up over repeated use into exactly this kind of horseshoe or crescent shape. They tend to cluster near water, which makes the marshy setting here entirely characteristic.

The site came to light in 2002 during an archaeological assessment carried out as part of the Ballyhaunis Water Supply Augmentation Scheme. Infrastructure projects of this kind, threading pipelines through fields and bogs, have been responsible for identifying a great many previously unrecorded sites across the country, and this was one of them. The assessment, registered under licence 02E0522, identified the mound and established its dimensions and form. Fortunately, as recorded by Guinan in 2014, the fulacht fia lay just outside the pipeline wayleave and was left undisturbed by the scheme's construction works. It survives, in other words, because the pipe went elsewhere.