These sites, found in their thousands across Ireland, are among the most common prehistoric monuments in the country, and the leading theory holds that they functioned as cooking places: a trough, often timber-lined or stone-lined, would be filled with water, and stones heated in a nearby fire would be dropped in to bring the water to a boil. The cracked, heat-shattered stones were then discarded in a mound around the trough. It is a deceptively simple technology, and it worked.

The Shannonpark example survives as a spread of burnt material measuring roughly 28 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west. Local memory records that the mound formerly stood about a metre high before ploughing gradually reduced it to its present, barely-there condition. That kind of slow attrition is common on agricultural land, and the footprint left behind, broad and scorched, is often all that marks the spot. What makes the Shannonpark site quietly interesting in its landscape context is that a second fulacht fia lies approximately 70 metres to the south, suggesting that this corner of Cork was visited, used, and returned to across what may have been a considerable stretch of prehistoric time. Paired or clustered sites like these raise questions that are difficult to answer without excavation: were they contemporary, or did one fall out of use before the other came into being?