That density is what makes this particular spot quietly remarkable. Fulachta fiadh, as they are known in Irish, are among the most common prehistoric monuments in the Irish landscape, yet finding six gathered into a single field is unusual enough to give pause.

A fulacht fia, broadly speaking, is a Bronze Age cooking site, typically identified by the distinctive horseshoe-shaped or kidney-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone that accumulates over years of use. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, a process efficient enough to cook large quantities of meat. The shattered, heat-fractured stone was discarded in a pile beside the trough, and it is those piles that survive as mounds today. At Mashanaglass, one of the six sites was already recorded as a small mound on an Ordnance Survey map from 1938, and a spread of burnt material has been noted across the area. The sites lie to the north of a stream, which is entirely typical; access to a reliable water source was essential to the whole operation, and fulachta fiadh are almost invariably found close to water.