That is, in its own quiet way, a remarkable fate for one of Ireland's most common prehistoric monument types, and a reminder of how much has been erased by centuries of agricultural improvement.

Fulachtaí fia, found in their thousands across Ireland, are the remains of ancient cooking sites, typically from the Bronze Age. They usually take the form of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone accumulated beside a trough, which would have been filled with water and heated by dropping in stones from a nearby fire. The process is efficient enough that experimental archaeologists have successfully boiled large quantities of water using the method in under an hour. At Derryduff, however, the mound itself is gone, levelled at some point during land reclamation. What was once a low, distinctive earthwork has been absorbed into the smooth surface of improved grazing land, leaving no visible trace above ground.