A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site, typically Bronze Age in date, identified by a spread of fire-cracked stone and charcoal that accumulates around a water trough where stones were heated and dropped to boil water. They are extraordinarily common across Ireland, particularly in low-lying or wet ground, and yet most go unnoticed for centuries beneath pasture and peat.

When the fence was taken out in 1983, burnt material was disturbed and brought to attention. A stretch of that same burnt material, running to around eight metres in length, remained embedded in the fence line to the east, essentially preserved by accident within the boundary itself. The boggy character of the ground to the north is typical of fulacht fia locations; prehistoric people seem to have chosen spots close to a natural water source, and wet or marshy ground often provided exactly that. The fence, in its own way, became an inadvertent archive of the site's archaeology.