It is not dramatic to look at, an irregular rise in the grass measuring roughly 22 metres east to west and 12 metres north to south, reaching just 1.2 metres at its highest point, but what it represents is one of the most widespread and quietly puzzling features of prehistoric Ireland.

This is a fulacht fia, a term used to describe the characteristic horseshoe-shaped or irregular mounds of heat-shattered stone that appear in their thousands across Ireland, particularly in low-lying, waterlogged ground close to streams or springs. The basic principle is well understood: stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to the boil, and the cracked, discarded stones gradually accumulated into the mound that survives today. What the troughs were actually used for is less settled. Cooking is the most widely accepted explanation, and experiments have shown that a substantial joint of meat can be boiled efficiently by this method. But brewing, hide-working, and bathing have all been proposed at various points, and the honest answer is that these sites were probably not all used for the same purpose. The example at Curraghgorm sits on the western bank of a stream, which is entirely typical; proximity to a reliable water source was the essential requirement, and the slight rise of accumulated burnt stone is often the only thing that marks the site today.