When a drain was being cut through rough grazing land near Roscrea in County Galway, the ground gave up a spread of burnt stone and ash measuring roughly ten metres across and nearly half a metre deep, exposed on both sides of the new cut. A fulacht fia, the term used for these ancient burnt mound sites, is typically the remnant of a Bronze Age outdoor cooking method in which stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The burnt, shattered stones were discarded into a characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound, and it is these spreads of fire-cracked material that survive so well in the Irish landscape, often in low-lying or boggy ground.

The site sits in a rush-covered field, the kind of waterlogged, marginal terrain where fulachtaí fia are commonly found, since proximity to water was essential to their function. To the east of the main spread, a roughly circular area about seven metres in diameter is notably clear of rushes, which may indicate a further associated feature beneath the surface. The site lies just to the south-east of a trackway, suggesting it was once part of a worked or travelled landscape rather than an isolated spot. A second fulacht fia lies approximately 160 metres to the south-south-east, and the presence of two such sites in close proximity is a reminder of how densely this type of monument can cluster in suitable terrain across the Irish midlands and west.