It was not discovered through antiquarian curiosity or chance ploughing, but through road construction, which so often forces the past to the surface before it disappears beneath tarmac and hardcore.

Ahead of improvements to the N9/N10 route between Waterford and Kilcullen, excavations carried out in 2006 uncovered the remains of a kiln with a roughly oval or trapezoidal plan, measuring about 2.6 metres along its northwest to southeast axis and nearly 2 metres wide at its widest point near the fire spot. Corn-drying kilns of this type were common features of early Irish agricultural settlements; grain, particularly in Ireland's damp climate, had to be dried before it could be milled or stored, and a small stone-lined or clay-lined structure with a separate fire chamber and drying floor served that purpose. The kiln here sat about 0.8 metres below the level of the drying chamber, a depth consistent with the sunken flue arrangements seen elsewhere from the period. What pinned it to history was a sample of hulled barley recovered from the site, radiocarbon dated to between AD 430 and 650, placing its use firmly in the early Christian period in Ireland. Nine metres to the northwest lay a burnt mound, a separate but related type of site, typically a heap of fire-cracked stones and charcoal deposited near a water source and associated with cooking or industrial heat processes, though its precise relationship to the kiln here is not recorded.