The discovery came as part of land reclamation and drainage works at Oxford, Co. Mayo, and the damage was already done before anyone realised what was there. A fulacht fia, as these sites are known, is a type of Bronze Age cooking place typically found near water and wet ground. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, which explains the characteristic mounds of cracked and fire-shattered stone that mark these sites across Ireland.

The mound uncovered at Oxford was semi-circular in plan, measuring roughly 14 metres north to south and 6 metres east to west, and standing about 0.7 metres high. It was composed of burnt stone, burnt clay, and black soil, the typical material signature of repeated high-temperature use. When the drainage trench cut across it, some of the large flat stones lining the trough, several measuring around a metre by 0.6 metres, were displaced and shifted out of position. What this accidental exposure revealed was telling: one face of each displaced stone was heavily coated with burnt clay, the direct result of sustained contact with intense heat and boiling water over many uses. The stone-lined trough itself, the functional heart of the site, had been damaged before it could be properly recorded or excavated on its own terms.