To the untrained eye they might pass for nothing more than slightly raised ground, but they are the surviving traces of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or heating site found in extraordinary numbers across Ireland. The basic principle involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to the boil, and repeating the process as the stones cracked and cooled. Over time, the discarded burnt stone accumulates into the characteristic horseshoe or oval mound that marks these sites today.

What gives this particular example a quiet extra interest is its proximity to a second fulacht fia located roughly a hundred metres to the south-west. The pairing is not unique in the Irish archaeological record, but it is a reminder that these were not isolated incidents of activity. Both sites sit close to the Awbeg River, which would have provided the reliable water supply essential to their use. The Awbeg, a tributary of the Blackwater flowing through north Cork, runs through a landscape that has clearly seen sustained prehistoric activity. The dimensions recorded here, an oval area just over thirteen metres north to south and nine and a half metres east to west, place this among the moderately sized examples of the type.