These are the remains of prehistoric cooking or processing sites, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone built up over centuries of use, usually beside a water source. The burnt material here is the residue of that long activity, stones that were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, a method of cooking that required no metal vessel and left behind a slowly accumulating heap of shattered rock.

What makes this particular site quietly notable is its proximity to a second fulacht fia, recorded just twenty metres to the south. The pairing is not unprecedented; such monuments are often found clustered, which has led archaeologists to debate whether grouped sites reflect repeated seasonal use, different functions carried out side by side, or simply the appeal of the same reliable stream over a long span of time. Most fulachtaí fia in Ireland date to the Bronze Age, broadly from around 1500 BCE onward, though some have produced dates ranging outside that period. At Ballynaraha, the stream running alongside would have provided the essential water supply, and the pasture setting today gives little outward sign of the activity that once took place here.