It measures eleven metres long, sixteen metres wide, and rises just 0.7 metres from the ground, with an opening three metres across facing northwest. A stream runs to the northeast. What this mound actually represents is something far older and more intriguing than its modest profile suggests: it is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, and one of the more enduring puzzles in the Irish archaeological landscape.

A fulacht fia, sometimes called a burnt mound, is the accumulated debris of repeated cooking or heating activity, typically dating to the Bronze Age, though some examples span a wider period. The usual interpretation is that water was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into a trough, and it is those same shattered, heat-damaged stones that form the characteristic crescent or kidney-shaped mound over time. The opening in the mound corresponds to where the trough would have been positioned, and the proximity of a water source, here the nearby stream, is entirely typical. Whether the sites were used for cooking, bathing, textile processing, or some combination of these remains debated among archaeologists, which gives even a small and unassuming example like this one a certain quiet interest. Cork has an unusually high concentration of fulachtaí fia, and the mid Cork landscape in particular is scattered with them.