Yet somewhere beneath what is now ordinary pasture, people were smelting metal and burning charcoal across a span of roughly five centuries, from the mid-Iron Age well into the early centuries AD.

The site came to light in 2006, when road improvement works along the N9/N10 corridor between Kilcullen and Waterford prompted a programme of archaeological excavation. The work, carried out under licence E2499, uncovered charcoal burning pits, smelting furnaces, and what appear to have been smithing hearths, the kind of low stone-built features used to heat and work metal once it had been refined from ore. Radiocarbon dating of samples from four of the pits returned calibrated dates ranging from 350 cal BC to AD 220, placing sustained activity here across the Iron Age. Alongside the metalworking remains, excavators found a figure-of-eight kiln, a double-lobed structure whose form, with two connected chambers, allowed for controlled firing and was used in various industrial processes of the period. That this kiln sat directly beside the smelting area suggests an integrated operation rather than incidental overlap, a small industrial complex serving whatever community occupied this landscape in the centuries around the birth of Christ.