When excavations were carried out ahead of the N8 Cashel Bypass and N74 Link Road South, a roughly 40 by 40 metre area of sloping ground to the south of a small lake yielded far more than engineers had bargained for. Among the pits and post-holes that came to light, two pit-burials were uncovered close to the western edge of the site, separated from one another by about eight metres.

The primary burial was a shallow, sub-circular pit, measuring just 0.31 metres north to south and 0.37 metres east to west, with a flat to concave base. It contained dark brown-black silty clay packed with charcoal and fragments of cremated bone, the characteristic residue of a cremation rite in which the burned remains of the dead were gathered and deposited in a modest hollow in the earth. This kind of pit-burial is a relatively common find from prehistoric Ireland, though the precise date of the Monadreela example was not established in the published record. The site did not give up only its dead. A fulacht fia, a type of burnt mound associated with ancient cooking or industrial activity involving heated stones and water-filled troughs, was found at the eastern edge of the excavation, and a kiln was identified roughly ten metres south of the lake. Together, these features suggest a stretch of ground that saw repeated, varied use across a considerable span of time, all of it invisible until a bypass cut through.