A fulacht fia, the term used for a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found widely across Ireland, had been sitting quietly beneath a low, grass-covered mound in reclaimed pasture, roughly eighteen metres east of a stream. From the surface it looked like little more than a gentle rise in the ground, about eight metres across and half a metre high, composed of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-darkened soil. These mounds, thousands of which survive across the Irish countryside, are the accumulated debris of repeated high-temperature activity, most likely the by-product of heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil.

Excavation in 1999, carried out in advance of the N8 Glanmire-Watergrasshill Bypass, revealed a more complex picture beneath the surface. The core of the site was an oval mound, roughly four metres east to west and three metres north to south, rising to just over half a metre. Two spreads of burnt stone and soil extended outward to the northeast and west, most likely scattered by machinery before archaeologists could record them in situ. More revealing were two pits found nearby. An oval pit, two metres by one and a half metres and about a quarter of a metre deep, lay filled with burnt stone roughly two and a half metres to the northeast of the mound. Further to the southeast sat a rectangular pit of similar dimensions but slightly deeper, its burnt stone fill accompanied by a quantity of white clay that may have lined the pit's interior, perhaps to hold water. Two further fulachtaí fia were identified within the same general area, one about fifteen metres to the northeast and another roughly forty-five metres beyond that, suggesting this stretch of ground beside the stream was used repeatedly, possibly over a long period.