Beneath a wet meadow in gently undulating County Tipperary lies a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in their thousands across Ireland, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones beside a trough. At Crehanagh, no such mound breaks the surface. The site leaves no visible trace above ground, its existence known only because a gas pipeline happened to cut through it.

The excavation took place in 1986, when work on the pipeline brought the site to light, recorded under reference BW/18/5 and subsequently published by Gowen in 1988. Fulachtaí fia are generally dated to the Bronze Age, though some examples span a wider range. The standard interpretation is that they functioned as outdoor cooking places: stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough, bringing the water to a boil. The wet, low-lying ground at Crehanagh fits the typical pattern well, since these sites are almost always found near a reliable source of water, whether a stream, a spring, or simply a seasonally waterlogged field. The lush meadow conditions here would have made the location practical for exactly that purpose several thousand years ago.