These sites, found in their thousands across the country, are generally understood to have functioned as ancient cooking places, where stones were heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. Exactly what was cooked, and by whom, and under what social circumstances, remains a matter of genuine archaeological debate.

What makes the Woodpark example quietly telling is the evidence of what has already been lost. Local information suggests the original spread of burnt material measured roughly thirty metres in diameter. What survives is noticeably smaller, an irregular patch running approximately sixteen metres east to west and fourteen metres north to south, its edges worn back by repeated ploughing. The site sits in tillage ground, which means each growing season has the potential to disturb it further. The reduction in extent is not unusual for this monument type; fulachtaí fia are low-lying and unspectacular in appearance, easily overlooked by a farmer working a field, and their characteristic mounds of fire-cracked stone offer no obvious reason to avoid them.