It is easy to walk past without registering what it is, but this blackened patch of ground represents one of the most common and quietly enigmatic monument types in the Irish landscape.

A fulacht fia is a prehistoric cooking site, typically Bronze Age in date, identified by a distinctive mound of fire-cracked stone. The usual method involved heating stones in a fire, then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the water rapidly to the boil. The stones crack and split with the thermal shock, and over repeated use they accumulate into the characteristic low spreads that survive across the Irish countryside in their thousands. What makes the Tullig Beg example quietly logical in its placement is the presence of a spring rising a short distance to the north-east. Water was the essential ingredient, and prehistoric communities consistently chose sites where a reliable source was close at hand. The slope and the spring together suggest this was not a casual or accidental spot but one selected with a degree of practical deliberation.