The example at Glenaglogh in County Cork is quietly notable for one particular reason: it sits directly beside a second fulacht fiadh, the two monuments sharing a north-facing slope and the same adjacent spring. That pairing, water source and all, is the kind of detail that turns an otherwise unremarkable grassy mound into something worth pausing over.

A fulacht fia, broadly speaking, is a prehistoric cooking or processing site. The typical arrangement involves a trough filled with water, heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it until the water boils. Over repeated use, the shattered stones accumulate into a horseshoe-shaped or circular mound of dark, burnt material, which is what survives into the present. The Glenaglogh mound is circular, sixteen metres in diameter and rising to about 0.8 metres, modest in height but reasonably substantial in spread. The proximity to a natural spring would have been essential to the site's function, providing a ready water supply, and it is not difficult to imagine why the same spot, or one immediately beside it, was returned to and used again. Whether the two monuments were in use at the same time or represent successive episodes of activity separated by generations is the kind of question the landscape alone cannot answer.