It is D-shaped, roughly fourteen metres east to west along its straight southern edge and seven metres north to south, and rises only about forty centimetres above the surrounding ground. Beneath the sod, however, it is composed entirely of burnt material, the accumulated debris of repeated prehistoric use.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of site found in large numbers across Ireland and generally associated with the Bronze Age. The term refers to a burnt mound, typically the by-product of a cooking or heating process in which stones were fired and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The shattered, heat-cracked stones were raked out after each use and piled nearby, and it is precisely this discard heap that forms the mound visible today. The site at Maulagowna has not escaped interference entirely. Local information records that during drainage works, some of the burnt material was removed from the mound and scattered in the vicinity, a small but irreversible loss to what the deposit might otherwise have told excavators about the sequence or duration of activity here. The setting, at the base of a waterfall and close to a reliable water source, is entirely typical; fulachtaí fia are almost always found near streams, springs, or boggy ground, precisely because a ready water supply was central to how they functioned.