It was found not during a dedicated excavation but during groundworks for the pitches themselves, the kind of routine development that occasionally, and unexpectedly, turns up evidence of lives lived on the same ground centuries or millennia earlier.

The feature is thought to be the base of a corn-drying kiln, a structure used in early Irish agriculture to dry harvested grain before milling or storage. Damp climates make drying essential, and these kilns, often built from stone or clay and fired from below, were a practical fixture of rural life across Ireland for centuries. The figure-of-eight form, with its two connected chambers, is a shape associated with this type of kiln elsewhere in the archaeological record. The Dundalk example was investigated under Excavation Licence No. 02E0008, with monitoring and reporting carried out by M. Mossop. The tentative late Iron Age dating makes it particularly unusual; most surviving corn-drying kilns in Ireland are associated with the early medieval period, which gives this feature, if the dating holds, a certain quiet significance. Rather than being lifted or dismantled, it was covered and preserved in situ, meaning it remains exactly where it was found, sealed under the surface of the sports ground above it.