While the surrounding pasture is thick with rushes, this mound is covered in short green grass, giving it an oddly neat appearance that seems almost deliberate. That distinction, easy to overlook from a distance, is often the first sign that something archaeologically significant lies underfoot.

The mound is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The general theory holds that fulachtaí fia were used to heat water by dropping fire-cracked stones into a trough, bringing the water to a boil and cooking meat. Over time, the shattered, heat-spent stones were discarded nearby, building up into the characteristic low, often horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive today. At Knockatemple, the mound is compact and roughly circular, measuring around 9.7 metres north to south and 9.5 metres east to west. It rises to only about 0.25 metres on its southern side and 0.6 metres to the north, so it sits close to the ground rather than forming any dramatic prominence. A slight depression to the east-southeast may indicate where the original trough was located. A stream or drain runs approximately 15 metres to the northeast, which is consistent with the water-dependent function of these sites. What makes the Knockatemple site particularly interesting is that it does not stand alone: a second fulacht fia lies just five metres to the east, suggesting that this particular stretch of wet ground was returned to repeatedly, or that the two features formed part of the same episode of activity.