The example at Imogane in County Cork sits in rough grazing land, roughly seventy metres to the north-west of a stream, and its presence there is entirely typical of the type, which is part of what makes it quietly compelling. A fulacht fia is essentially the remains of a Bronze Age cooking or boiling site, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the water to temperature. The scorched, shattered stones were thrown aside after use, and over centuries of repeated activity they accumulated into the low, distinctive mounds that survive today.

The Imogane example takes the classic horseshoe shape, measuring eleven metres east to west and fifteen metres north to south, with a modest height of around 0.4 metres. Its opening, four metres wide, faces south-west. That horseshoe form is characteristic of the type: the gap in the mound corresponds to where the trough would have been, and the curved bank of burnt and broken material built up around it on the remaining sides. The proximity to a stream is equally typical, since a reliable water source was essential to the whole process. Bronze Age communities across Ireland returned to these spots repeatedly, which is why the mounds grew as large as they did, and why so many survive in low-lying or waterside ground where later agricultural disturbance was less severe.