It measures roughly fifteen metres across and rises only about sixty centimetres from the ground, so it barely registers as a feature in the landscape. But that unassuming heap is composed almost entirely of burnt and shattered stone, the accumulated debris of prehistoric cooking, and it belongs to a cluster of five such sites gathered in the same stretch of countryside.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, with Cork among the most densely concentrated counties. The typical arrangement involved a timber-lined trough sunk into the ground near a water source, filled with water, and then heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. The stones, once used, were discarded into a mound beside the trough. Over repeated use, sometimes across generations, these mounds grew into the low horseshoe-shaped humps that survive today. The proximity of this particular example to a stream is characteristic, since a reliable water supply was essential to the whole process. What is less common is finding five of them in such close proximity, which raises questions about why this specific area in Kilcolman attracted such sustained, repeated activity during prehistory. Whether the sites were used simultaneously, or represent different periods of occupation returning to the same favoured ground, is the kind of question that only excavation could properly answer.