When a farmer ploughed the land in the 1970s, the blade turned up a scatter of burnt stone, charcoal, and darkened soil, the quiet signature of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland. The ground has since closed over it again, and nothing breaks the surface today.

A fulacht fia typically consists of a trough, often timber-lined, dug into the earth near a water source, along with a mound of fire-cracked stone built up from repeated use. The method is straightforward: stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into water in the trough to bring it to a boil. Whatever was being cooked, possibly meat, possibly something else entirely, debate continues among archaeologists, the process left behind a characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound of shattered, heat-damaged stone. This example sits on a gently south-east-facing slope, close to several springs, precisely the kind of well-watered, sheltered ground that Bronze Age communities favoured for such activity. Another recorded archaeological site lies roughly 150 metres to the south, suggesting this part of Johnstown was not merely a convenient stopping point but perhaps a locality with longer, repeated use.