Not a settlement, not a monument, just the faint residue of moments, possibly prehistoric, when somebody needed heat.

The pits came to light in 2002, when excavations were carried out at Ballybeg ahead of construction work on the N11 Wicklow Bypass. Working under Excavation Licence 02E0567, the excavator recorded a series of pits and proposed that they may well be prehistoric in date and the result of single use hearths, a phrase that quietly carries some weight. Single use hearths are exactly what they sound like: a fire lit once, in a dug hollow, then abandoned. No return, no rebuilding. They tend to suggest people passing through rather than settling, perhaps hunters, travellers, or seasonal workers moving across a landscape that has since been entirely reshaped. The cautious phrasing, "may well be", reflects how difficult it is to date features like these without associated finds or organic material suitable for radiocarbon analysis. The record, as reported by Powell in 2005, leaves the question open.