It is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in the thousands across Ireland, typically Bronze Age in origin. The basic principle is simple enough: stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil. Over repeated use, the stones shattered from the thermal shock, and the debris accumulated in a characteristic horseshoe or crescent shape around the trough. This particular example measures roughly nine and a half metres northeast to southwest and eight metres northwest to southeast, with an opening of about one and a half metres facing the stream, which would have served as the water source.

What gives the Kealagowlane site a particular interest is not the fulacht fia alone but its company. Two further burnt mounds lie roughly thirty metres to the east, and a cairn, a deliberate pile of stones that may mark a burial or some other ritual purpose, sits about ninety metres to the northeast. Whether these features were in use at the same time or accumulated across generations, their proximity suggests this stretch of hillside was a meaningful place over a long period. Erosion has already begun to reveal patches of the charcoal-rich burnt material on the northwestern face of the mound, and occasional stones break through the surface, small signs that the site is slowly giving itself up to the landscape around it.