It measures roughly twenty metres from north to south and sixteen metres from east to west, and it is composed almost entirely of burnt and fire-cracked stone. That combination of shape, location, and material is the calling card of the fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least discussed monument types in the Irish landscape.

A fulacht fia is, in essence, the remains of a prehistoric cooking or heating site. The typical arrangement involved a trough, often timber-lined or cut into the ground, which was filled with water. Stones were heated in a nearby fire and then dropped into the trough to bring the water to a boil. Over repeated use, the stones would shatter from the thermal shock, and the broken, blackened fragments were discarded in a horseshoe-shaped or oval mound around the trough. These monuments date most commonly to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some have produced earlier or later dates. They are found in considerable numbers across Ireland, almost always in low-lying, wet ground near a water source, which is precisely the situation here beside the stream at Cooldaniel. The mound at this site, standing at 0.8 metres high, represents an accumulation of considerable activity over time, the slow build-up of hundreds or thousands of discarded burnt stones.