It measures twelve metres long, ten metres wide, and just under a metre high, with its opening facing south. To a passing eye it might look like a natural rise in the field, but the blackened, fire-cracked material packed into it tells a different story.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The basic idea was straightforward: a trough, usually timber-lined or stone-lined and sunk into the ground, was filled with water; stones were heated in a nearby fire and dropped into the water to bring it to a boil; and the cracked, spent stones were then raked out and discarded nearby. Over repeated use, those discarded heaps of burnt stone built up into the characteristic horseshoe or kidney-shaped mounds that archaeologists now recognise across the Irish countryside. What exactly the boiling water was used for remains debated, with cooking, textile processing, and bathing all proposed at various points. The fact that this site sits immediately north of another fulacht fia, with two further examples close by, suggests the area was visited and used repeatedly, perhaps over generations.