A fulacht fia is, in essence, the remains of a prehistoric cooking site, typically Bronze Age in date, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The process leaves behind a distinctive horseshoe or crescent-shaped mound of shattered, heat-fractured stone, and it is precisely that shape which survives here at Knockbarry.

The mound measures roughly 17 metres on its longer northeast to southwest axis and 15 metres across, rising only about half a metre above the surrounding ground. It sits around 80 metres north of a stream and just south of a spring, a placement that is entirely typical of these sites, which required reliable access to water. The opening, facing west-southwest and at least 1.5 metres wide, would once have corresponded to the trough or working area at the centre of the monument. A field fence clips the eastern edge of the mound, and a drain running parallel to it has caused some further disturbance. What makes the Knockbarry location quietly notable is the proximity of a second fulacht fia roughly 120 metres to the north-northwest, suggesting that this stretch of north Cork was a place of repeated or sustained activity rather than a single isolated episode of use.