What was once recorded as a kidney-shaped mound on a 1938 Ordnance Survey six-inch map now leaves no visible surface trace, absorbed into agricultural land that was reshaped long after the mound was mapped.

The site is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking place found in extraordinary numbers across Ireland, particularly in low-lying, waterlogged ground near streams. The typical arrangement involved a trough dug into the earth, filled with water, and heated by dropping fire-scorched stones into it until the water boiled. The shattered, fire-cracked stones were then piled around the trough, forming the characteristic horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound that survives at thousands of sites across the country. Most fulachta fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though the cooking method itself spans a wider period. The Curraghanearla example followed the classic form: its kidney shape, its position beside a stream, and its low-lying situation in what is now reclaimed pasture all fit the pattern closely. That it appeared on the 1938 map suggests it was still a legible earthwork within living memory, making its subsequent disappearance into the managed farmscape a fairly recent loss.