It is, in fact, the remains of a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland and yet still not entirely understood. The term refers to a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone, typically found near water, which accumulated over repeated use. The most widely accepted interpretation is that these sites were used for cooking, with water heated by dropping fire-heated stones into a wooden or stone trough until it boiled. The stones, fractured by the repeated thermal shock, were discarded into a spreading mound around the trough.

What makes the site at Dromanarrigle quietly notable is not just its relationship with the spring beside it, which would have supplied the essential water for the process, but the fact that a second fulacht fia lies approximately fifty metres to the west. The clustering of these sites is not unheard of across Ireland, but it does raise questions about how this particular patch of ground was used, by whom, and over what period. Whether the two sites were contemporary, or whether one fell out of use before the other was established, is not something the visible remains can answer. Fulachtaí fia are generally associated with the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some have produced dates ranging earlier or later. The spread of burnt material at Dromanarrigle, still visible as a grass-covered deposit surrounding the spring, is a physical record of that repeated, labour-intensive activity carried out here in the deep past.