But the one at Knockskehy in north Cork is older than it looks, and more precisely dated than most ancient sites could ever hope to be. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or heating site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stone accumulated beside a water source and a timber-lined trough. The mound here measures roughly nineteen metres along its longer axis and half a metre in height, its opening facing west across the boggy ground to its south.

In 1991, a drain cut through the western side of the mound broke open the site and exposed the remains of a plank-built wooden trough. The base had been constructed from three oak planks, all split radially from a single tree trunk, and held in position by square-cut timber stakes, three of which were still standing where they had been driven in nearly three thousand years earlier. Grooves had been cut into the surface of the base planks to receive end boards; one end plank, at the north-western corner, survived intact. The mound material itself contained the usual hallmarks of these sites: heat-shattered sandstone packed into charcoal-rich soil, the accumulated debris of repeated heating and quenching. No hearth was found during the exposure, though one is thought to lie beneath the undisturbed portion of the mound to the north-west. Timber samples from the trough were submitted for dendrochronological dating, a method that uses the growth rings preserved in ancient wood to calculate felling dates, and the result placed the timbers at 991 plus or minus nine years BC. That precision is unusual. It puts activity at this spot firmly in the late Bronze Age, around the time when Ireland's metalworking traditions were at their most sophisticated. A second fulacht fia lies approximately 130 metres to the south-west, suggesting this corner of north Cork saw repeated or sustained use across the same period.