It measures roughly 3.7 metres by 4 metres and is composed of burnt material, the characteristic signature of a fulacht fia. These are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, thought to date broadly from the Bronze Age, and interpreted by most archaeologists as cooking sites where stones were heated in fire and dropped into water-filled troughs to bring them to a boil. The cracked and fire-shattered stones were then discarded, accumulating over repeated use into the low, dark mounds that survive today. A slight depression on the eastern side of this mound likely marks where such a trough once sat.

What makes the Curraghagalla site quietly interesting is that it does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies approximately ten metres to the north-west. The proximity of two such monuments suggests repeated or overlapping activity in this particular patch of ground, though whether the two were used simultaneously or represent different episodes separated by years or generations is impossible to say from surface evidence alone. North Cork contains a considerable concentration of these sites, and their distribution often follows low-lying, wet ground close to water sources, conditions that would have made the trough-filling process straightforward for whoever was using them.