It measures roughly seven metres along its longer axis, rises to about one and a half metres, and opens to the north in a shape that, to an informed eye, is immediately recognisable: this is a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least explained monument types in the Irish archaeological record.

Fulachtaí fia are crescent or kidney-shaped mounds formed from the accumulated debris of repeated heating. The standard interpretation holds that stones were fired in a hearth and then dropped into a water-filled trough, bringing the water rapidly to the boil. What the activity was actually for, cooking, textile preparation, bathing, brewing, remains genuinely contested among archaeologists. The majority of surviving examples date to the Bronze Age, though some were used into the early medieval period. This particular mound, situated on the west bank of a small south-flowing river, follows the pattern closely: proximity to a reliable water source is almost universal among sites of this type, and here the river would have provided exactly what the process required. Roughly eighty metres to the north-west lies a separate enclosed feature, suggesting the area saw a broader pattern of use rather than a single isolated episode of activity.