The mound is modest, a low rise in the earth measuring roughly 14.5 metres north to south and 13.5 metres east to west, but beneath and around it lies the characteristic spread of burnt and shattered stone that identifies these sites. The stones were heated in fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, a technique used repeatedly until the cracked, fire-blackened stones were discarded into the surrounding mound. Over centuries, that discard builds into the dark, scorched spreads that archaeologists now recognise across the Irish landscape.

What makes this particular spot quietly remarkable is not the site itself in isolation but the density of activity it hints at. A second fulacht fia lies approximately 40 metres to the east, and a third sits around 100 metres to the west. The three monuments cluster along the base of a north-facing slope, a location that would have offered reliable ground water, the essential requirement for this kind of site. Whether they were used simultaneously or represent activity returning to the same favourable ground across generations is not something the surface evidence can settle, but their proximity suggests this stretch of Kilbarraree was a place people came back to, repeatedly, for purposes that still prompt debate among archaeologists. Cooking is the most widely accepted explanation, though some researchers have proposed bathing, textile processing, or other communal uses.