Beneath the turf, however, lies a spread of burnt material that marks the site as a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet persistently mysterious monument types in the Irish archaeological record. These sites, found in their thousands across Ireland, are generally interpreted as ancient cooking places, where stones were heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the contents to a boil. The characteristic mound of shattered, fire-cracked stone is what survives, sometimes after three or four thousand years.

What makes the Templemary site quietly interesting is not its singularity but its company. Approximately 120 metres to the north-west lies a second fulacht fia, suggesting that this corner of north Cork was returned to, or continuously used, for the same purpose. Whether the two sites were in use at the same time or represent activity across different periods is difficult to say without excavation, but the pairing is a reminder that these monuments rarely exist in complete isolation. The landscape around them, low-lying and damp, is exactly the kind of terrain these sites tend to favour, close to water and workable ground.