It is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The name, loosely translated, refers to a cooking place associated with hunters or wandering bands, and the characteristic remains are exactly what you see here: a mound of burnt and shattered stone, dark and crumbly, built up over repeated use as stones were heated in fire and plunged into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point.

What adds a small note of mystery to this particular site is a discrepancy in the record. A second mound was noted at this location, yet when the site was visited and documented for the published archaeological inventory of mid Cork in 1997, that second mound could not be found. Whether it had been levelled during agricultural improvement of the land, obscured beneath the reclaimed pasture, or simply misidentified at some earlier point is not known. The one mound that does remain is modest but measurable, a genuine survivor in a countryside that has seen a great deal of change.