The development, which planned to build 34 houses across nearly 25,000 square metres, required preliminary excavation work that revealed an unexpected spread of burnt stone in the eastern section of the site. This discovery came during the excavation of fourteen test trenches, with Trench 9 yielding the most significant find; a concentration of heat-shattered stones that likely represents the remains of a fulacht fiadh, an ancient Irish cooking site dating back to the Bronze Age.

The burnt stone spread measured approximately 13 metres east to west by 12 metres north to south, with a depth of around 15 centimetres, extending right up to the eastern boundary ditch that marks both the townland and parish borders. Fulachta fiadh, commonly found across Ireland, were outdoor cooking sites where our ancestors heated stones in fires before dropping them into water-filled troughs to boil meat and other foods. The low-lying, slightly waterlogged nature of this particular area would have made it ideal for such activities, as natural groundwater could have filled the cooking trough without the need to carry water from elsewhere.

Rather than excavating and potentially destroying this piece of prehistory, the archaeological team chose to preserve the burnt stone spread in situ, carefully covering it with geotextile fabric and sealing it beneath 1.3 metres of broken stone. This preservation approach ensures that future generations might have the opportunity to study this ancient cooking site with more advanced techniques. Whilst the remainder of the site revealed no further archaeological features or artefacts during monitoring of topsoil stripping, this single discovery offers a tangible connection to the daily lives of those who inhabited this corner of Donegal thousands of years ago.