It measures roughly 11.7 metres along its longest axis, rises only about 0.4 metres above the surrounding ground, and opens to the west through a gap some 2.2 metres wide. To the untrained eye it might read as a natural feature, a slight rise in waterlogged terrain, but it is in fact the remains of a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish archaeological record.

A fulacht fia is, in essence, a Bronze Age cooking or heating site. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, and then using that heat to cook meat or, as some researchers have proposed, for bathing, brewing, or textile processing. The burnt and shattered stones were discarded to the sides and over time formed the distinctive horseshoe or kidney shape visible today, with the open end generally marking where the trough once sat. What makes the Kilcolman example particularly notable is that it is not an isolated find. It belongs to a cluster of six such monuments in the immediate area, suggesting this stretch of marshy ground saw repeated or sustained use over time, possibly across generations. Roughly 40 metres to the north lies a ring-barrow, a circular earthen burial monument, pointing to a broader ritual and domestic presence in this part of the landscape during prehistory.