The surface evidence is quiet and easy to overlook: an oval spread of burnt stones and charcoal-stained soil, roughly ten metres by eight, sitting in the landscape without any obvious monument to mark it out. A second almost identical feature lies just ten metres to the south, raising the possibility that this hillside was a place of repeated, purposeful activity across a long stretch of prehistoric time.

What has been identified here is a fulacht fia, a type of site found in considerable numbers across Ireland and interpreted by most archaeologists as a Bronze Age cooking place. The typical arrangement involves a trough, usually dug into the ground and sometimes timber-lined, filled with water and heated by dropping fire-warmed stones into it. The stones, cracked by repeated heating and cooling, accumulate into the characteristic mounds of burnt and shattered rock that survive in the soil for thousands of years. The charcoal-stained earth associated with these sites is the residue of the fires used to heat the stones. The site at Kilruddery was recorded in 2000, and its location on a relatively gentle slope, with a second possible example close by, fits a pattern seen elsewhere in Ireland where fulachta fiadh cluster near water sources or in low-lying, accessible terrain.