It measures 13.5 metres north to south and 9 metres east to west, rising to about 0.9 metres at its highest point, with an opening 2.5 metres wide facing west towards the water. That orientation is not incidental. It is the signature of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or heating site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically positioned beside a water source. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and the crescent mound is the accumulated debris of cracked and discarded stones, built up over repeated use.

What makes this particular site quietly arresting is that it does not stand alone. Roughly 20 metres to the north lies a second fulacht fia, and about 40 metres to the south a burnt mound, a related class of site defined by the same basic accumulation of fire-cracked stone and charcoal-rich soil. Three such features clustered within a short stretch of the same stream bank, all sitting within a network of field boundaries, suggests that this small valley in Cork was a repeatedly frequented place, returned to across what may have been a considerable span of prehistoric time. Whether they were in use simultaneously or represent activity across different periods is not something the surface evidence alone can answer, but the concentration is unusual enough to give the site a different weight than any single mound would carry on its own.