It rises only about 0.3 metres above the ground, measures roughly five to six metres across, and is composed of dense, fire-cracked limestone fragments packed into dark brown-black soil. That particular combination, small burnt stones and charred earth, is the calling card of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, with the discarded, shattered fragments accumulating over time into the characteristic mound. The shallow central depression, about a metre wide and open to the south-west, marks where the trough once sat, and it faces directly onto an area of wet ground fed by the spring at the base of the limestone terrace.

The choice of location makes immediate sense. Proximity to a reliable water source was essential to the whole operation, and here the spring rises at the foot of a steep slope of limestone boulders and outcropping that forms the southern edge of the terrace, providing both water and a natural windbreak. Writing in The Other Clare in 1991, McMahon noted a fulacht fia beside a spring on the northern reaches of Turlough Hill, describing it as literally within a stone's throw of the summit, and this monument is almost certainly the same site, though the grid reference McMahon gave appears to contain an error in the easting. The slight discrepancy is a reminder of how easy it is for a feature this unassuming to be approximately located rather than precisely fixed, sitting quietly in open pasture with no particular announcement of its presence or age.