It measures roughly sixteen metres at its widest and is partially overgrown, its northern edge interrupted by a drain. To a passing eye it might look like nothing more than a slightly odd rise in a field. It is, in fact, the remains of a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least-discussed monument types in the Irish landscape.

A fulacht fia is, in essence, a prehistoric cooking site. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire until they were intensely hot, then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the water to a boil. The shattered, heat-spent stones were discarded to the side over time, gradually accumulating into the characteristic horseshoe or kidney-shaped mound that survives today. These sites are found in their thousands across Ireland, usually in low-lying or marshy ground close to a water source. The proximity of this example to a nearby well fits that pattern almost perfectly. What makes Curraheen quietly notable is that this mound is probably not alone: a survey by Bowman in 1934 recorded as many as seven fulachta fiadh within the same townland, suggesting that this particular stretch of north Cork was a place of repeated or sustained activity across prehistoric time, rather than a single isolated episode.