It looks, at first glance, like little more than a dark patch in the grass. What it represents, however, is one of the most common and quietly fascinating monument types in the Irish archaeological landscape: a fulacht fia.

A fulacht fia is the remains of a prehistoric cooking or processing site, typically Bronze Age in date, characterised by a mound of fire-cracked stones and charcoal built up beside a water source over repeated use. The accepted interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the liquid rapidly to the boil, a method efficient enough to cook large joints of meat. The proximity to running water was not incidental; the stream would have supplied the trough and, in some cases, kept it naturally replenished. At Coolcarron, that same stream has been gradually undermining the site from the north-east, eroding away part of the deposit over what may have been centuries. What remains is a compressed record of repeated, practical activity, ordinary life conducted at the water's edge long before the landscape was divided into fields and farms.