It measures just under twelve metres in length and nearly nine metres wide, with a narrow opening facing west. To most passers-by it would look like little more than a slight rise in boggy ground, but it is the remains of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically dated to the Bronze Age.

A fulacht fia, sometimes called a burnt mound, is thought to have functioned as an outdoor cooking place, most likely by heating stones in a fire and then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil. The stones, repeatedly heated and quenched, eventually shatter, and it is this accumulated debris of fire-cracked rock that forms the characteristic horseshoe mound, the hollow at the centre marking where the trough once sat. What makes the Coolaniddane site quietly notable is that it does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies approximately forty metres to the east, suggesting that this particular stretch of marshy, stream-side ground was a place people returned to, or that different groups made use of the same favourable water source at different times. The pairing is not unique in Ireland, but it adds a layer of interest to what might otherwise seem an unremarkable patch of wetland in mid Cork.