When work on the inner relief road disturbed the ground, excavators found a rough surface made up of fire-cracked stones fused together with iron deposits, the kind of scorched, slag-heavy residue that points unmistakably to metalworking activity. Alongside it came a scatter of finds that told a quietly complicated story: unglazed pottery, worked flints, lumps of slag, and a stone bearing what may be a cup mark, a shallow circular hollow ground or pecked into the rock surface, the meaning of which remains contested among archaeologists but which appears across prehistoric sites throughout Ireland and Britain.

Excavated in 1994 under licence by J. Channing, the site also yielded three small pits whose position and character suggested a connection to whatever metalworking had taken place on the surface nearby. Slag is the glassy waste material left over when metal ore is smelted or worked, and its presence here, combined with the fire-cracked and iron-stained stones, indicates that this patch of ground once saw sustained high-temperature activity. The combination of flints, unglazed pottery, and possible cup-marked stone makes precise dating difficult without further analysis, since these materials can span a broad range of prehistoric and early historic periods. What the assemblage does confirm is that this corner of County Louth was a place of deliberate, repeated human industry rather than passing occupation.