Before the machinery moved in, archaeologists in 2003 uncovered a fulacht fia sitting quietly on level ground about a hundred metres west of a stream. A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site, found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stones beside a water source and a trough into which heated stones were dropped to boil water. They are so common in the Irish countryside that they have become almost invisible through familiarity, yet each excavation tends to add something to the picture of how they actually functioned.

What the 2003 dig revealed here was a spread of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil covering an area of roughly twelve metres by ten, though at a maximum depth of only twenty-five centimetres it was a relatively thin deposit. Modern field drains running in a north-east to south-west direction had cut through and disturbed much of it. Beneath the spread, excavators found the feature that gives fulachta fia their practical logic: a rectangular timber-lined trough measuring two and a half metres by one and a half, sunk to a depth of thirty-seven centimetres. Immediately to its north-west was a hearth made from a setting of stones, the arrangement that would have allowed stones to be heated before being transferred into the water-filled trough. Two pits containing burnt material were also uncovered nearby. The work was published by O'Neill in 2005, providing a detailed record of a site that would otherwise have been removed entirely by the bypass construction.