It has been cut into at several points, its north and south ends partially levelled, its west side disturbed, and a cutting up to five metres wide running north to south through its centre. What remains is the recognisable signature of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones accumulated beside a trough that would have been filled with water and heated by dropping in stones from a fire. The mound is the discard heap, built up over repeated use across years or centuries. There may be a possible opening on the south side of this one, though the overall form has been considerably altered.

The site was probably among four fulachta fiadh recorded in the Knockaclarig townland by Bowman in 1934, cited in what appears to have been a local or regional survey of the area. The clustering of four such monuments within a single townland is not unusual; fulachta fiadh are among the most common field monuments in Cork and across Munster generally, and they tend to appear in groups near sources of water. Their precise function has been debated by archaeologists for decades, with cooking, brewing, bathing, and industrial processes all proposed at various times, though the cooking interpretation remains the most widely accepted. What they share is a Bronze Age date in most cases, and a quiet persistence in the landscape, surviving as low mounds that casual observers might easily mistake for natural rises in the ground.