It is, in fact, the remains of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The mound is roughly circular, measuring around twelve metres north to south and just over eleven metres east to west, and rises no more than seventy centimetres at its highest northern point. Beneath the turf, it is composed of shattered sandstone fragments packed into black soil, the characteristic signature of repeated cycles of heating stones and plunging them into water.

The mechanics of a fulacht fia are straightforward once explained. Stones would be heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough, bringing the water rapidly to the boil. The cracked and spent stones were discarded into a horseshoe-shaped heap around the trough, which is exactly what accumulated here over many episodes of use. On the west-northwest side of the mound, a shallow hollow roughly one metre in diameter may mark the position of that original trough. A stream or drain runs just five metres to the southwest, which would have provided the necessary water supply. The proximity of a second burnt mound, recorded approximately fifty metres to the north-northwest, suggests this was not an isolated episode of activity but part of a broader pattern of prehistoric occupation or use of this particular landscape.