It measures roughly nine metres across and rises just under a metre from the surrounding terrain. The mound is composed of burnt material, and that detail is the key to understanding what it once was.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, and particularly common in Cork and Kerry. The mound itself is the accumulated debris of repeated use: cracked and fire-shattered stone, typically dumped beside a water trough after each cooking session. The usual method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a trough of water to bring it to the boil, then using that hot water to cook meat. Over time, the discarded stone built up into the characteristic horseshoe or circular mound shape that survives today. Most fulachta fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some sites have produced dates outside that range. The marshy setting at Currahaly is entirely typical; these sites were almost always placed near a reliable water source, and low-lying boggy ground has also helped preserve them over the millennia by keeping the burnt material sealed beneath damp conditions.