It is horseshoe-shaped, roughly thirteen metres long, nearly thirteen metres wide, and only half a metre high, with a southwest-facing opening just over three metres across. Cattle have worn it down considerably over the years, yet enough of it survives to identify it clearly as a fulacht fia, the term used for a class of prehistoric cooking site found in extraordinary numbers across Ireland.

Fulachtaí fia, as they are known collectively, typically consist of a trough dug near a water source, into which stones were heated in a fire and then dropped to bring the water to a boil. The spent, shattered stones were piled to the side over time, forming the characteristic horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound that survives long after every other trace of activity has vanished. The Corbally example follows this pattern closely, positioned beside a stream that would have supplied the necessary water. What gives the site a quiet extra dimension is the proximity of a second fulacht fia, recorded roughly sixty metres to the east. Two such sites in such close company raises questions that archaeology has not yet fully answered: whether they were used simultaneously, by different groups, or at different periods entirely remains unclear. Ireland has thousands of these monuments, mostly dating to the Bronze Age, yet they continue to prompt genuine debate about their purpose, with cooking, brewing, bathing, and textile processing all proposed at various points.