A fulacht fia is, in essence, a Bronze Age cooking or heating site, typically consisting of a trough dug into the ground, a hearth, and a mound of fire-cracked stone that accumulated as hot rocks were used to boil water. They are found in their thousands across Ireland, usually in low-lying or marshy ground, and yet the precise range of their uses, whether for cooking meat, brewing, textile processing, or bathing, is still debated.

The Charlesland site came to light during excavations carried out under licence as part of the development, with findings subsequently published by Phelan in 2007. The work was tied directly to the construction of the Charlesland Residential Development, meaning the monument was identified and recorded precisely because the ground was being disturbed for new housing. This is a familiar pattern in Irish archaeology: the planning and development process, for all its disruptions, has been responsible for uncovering a remarkable number of sites that would otherwise have remained invisible beneath fields and pasture.