What once stood here was a fulacht fia, one of the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, yet also one of the least understood. These are the remains of prehistoric cooking sites, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and charred material built up beside a water source over repeated use. They are found in their thousands across Ireland, dating mostly to the Bronze Age, and yet the routines of daily or seasonal life they represent rarely get the attention of more dramatic monuments.

The Derry example followed the classic pattern: burnt material spread near a stream, the water supply that would have been essential to the whole operation. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, cooking meat or serving other purposes that archaeologists still debate. What distinguishes this particular site is not what survives but what was done to it. According to local information, the mound was levelled around 1979, leaving only the scatter of burnt material in the surrounding pasture as evidence of what had been there.