It measures roughly twelve metres north to south, fourteen metres east to west, and rises less than a metre above the surrounding ground. To most eyes it would look like nothing more than a boggy hump in a neglected field. It is, in fact, a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish landscape, and it has a near neighbour: a second example of the same type lies approximately eighty metres to the west.

Fulachtaí fia, sometimes called burnt mounds, are prehistoric cooking sites, found in enormous numbers across Ireland, particularly in low-lying or marshy ground near water sources. The typical arrangement involved a trough, usually timber-lined or cut into the earth, filled with water, which was then heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. Those stones, once spent, were raked out and discarded, and over centuries of repeated use the accumulated debris formed the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive today. The burnt, shattered stone gives these mounds their dark, distinctive appearance and their immediate texture underfoot. Most date to the Bronze Age, broadly speaking the period between roughly 2000 and 500 BC, though some sites show evidence of use across long spans of time. The presence of two examples in such close proximity at Killeenemer is not unusual in itself, as fulachtaí fia frequently cluster in areas with reliable water and suitable grazing, but it does suggest that this particular corner of north Cork saw sustained, repeated human activity across the prehistoric period.