Measuring roughly thirteen metres north to south and six and a half metres east to west, and rising just over a metre in height, it is the kind of feature that most walkers would pass without a second glance. A drain was cut to the west along the line of a stream at some point, and the material thrown up from that digging was piled onto the mound, adding to its bulk.

A fulacht fia, sometimes called a burnt mound, is one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, typically associated with the Bronze Age. The basic principle involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and using the resulting hot water for cooking, bathing, or possibly industrial processes such as working hides. The burnt and shattered stones were discarded in a crescentric heap around the trough, which is precisely the form that survives here at Gowlane. The marshy, low-lying setting is characteristic; these sites are almost always found near water sources, and the ground conditions here, alongside the stream that prompted the later drain, would have made it well suited to its original purpose. What makes this particular location quietly notable is the proximity of a second fulacht fia immediately to the south, suggesting that this small area of Cork countryside saw repeated or sustained prehistoric activity rather than a single, isolated episode of use.