It measures roughly eleven metres along its longer axis and rises just over a metre above the surrounding ground. A smaller stream runs immediately to its south, and a related burnt spread lies about sixty metres to the southeast. What you are looking at is a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish countryside.

Fulachtaí fia are generally thought to date from the Bronze Age, though some examples have been found to span a much wider period. They consist of a mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal, typically horseshoe-shaped or oval, built up over repeated use beside a water source. The working theory is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, though what exactly this boiling was for, whether cooking, textile processing, bathing, or something else entirely, remains a matter of genuine debate among archaeologists. The proximity of this example to two separate watercourses is typical; a reliable supply of water was essential to whatever was happening here. The Slievenaneav stream would have provided exactly that, and the clustering of a second burnt spread nearby suggests sustained activity in this particular spot rather than a single isolated event.