A fulacht fia, the term used for these prehistoric cooking or hot-water sites, typically consists of a mound of heat-shattered stone accumulating beside a water source and a timber-lined trough sunk into the ground nearby. Stones would be heated in a hearth and dropped into the water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to temperature, the cracked and spent stones then being discarded to form the characteristic mound. The site near Fermoy in County Cork followed this pattern closely, situated to the west of a diverted stream and concealing, beneath a spread of roughly ten metres by nine, a trough, a hearth, at least one additional pit that may have served as a second trough, and the traces of timber framing preserved as a cluster of stake-holes in the soil.

The site came to light in 2005 during excavation ahead of the construction of the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass, the kind of road-scheme archaeology that has quietly transformed understanding of prehistoric Ireland over the past few decades. The main trough measured 2.15 metres by 1.46 metres and reached a depth of 0.48 metres; sixty-one stake-holes in total were associated with the trough and the hearth, a number suggesting a reasonably substantial timber structure once stood here. The hearth itself lay to the north-west of the trough, its northern edge defined by sixteen stake-holes, with three more positioned further to the west. A corner of the trough had been truncated by a pit that may have been an earlier or later trough, and a further pit lay to the south-east. Two separate groups of Bronze Age features were excavated in the same corridor to the north-east and south-east, suggesting this stretch of the Cork landscape saw repeated activity over a considerable period. The excavation was reported by O'Reilly in 2006.