Not a dramatic pyre or a forge, simply a domestic or working hearth, roughly the size of a large doormat, oval in shape, its edges softly rounded with no discernible corners. What makes it quietly remarkable is the fact that it survived at all, preserved under the soil of Ballyvergan until road construction in the early 2000s brought it briefly back into the light.

The hearth was excavated in 2001 during archaeological testing and monitoring carried out ahead of the bypass works. It measured 1.2 metres north to south, 0.96 metres east to west, and sat just under 20 centimetres deep. Inside, archaeologists found three separate ashy fills layered above an oxidised, heat-reddened base, the kind of deposit left by a fire used repeatedly over time rather than lit once and abandoned. A carbon sample taken from the fill was radiocarbon dated to between 160 BC and AD 90, placing whoever tended this fire somewhere in the late Iron Age, a period in Ireland associated with shifting settlement patterns, agricultural activity, and the gradual changes that preceded the early medieval era. The date range spans roughly two and a half centuries, so it is impossible to say whether the hearth belonged to a single generation or was returned to across many lifetimes.