It measures roughly eight metres east to west and seven metres north to south, rising only about forty centimetres above the surrounding land. What makes it unusual is what it is made of: burnt and fire-cracked stone, the accumulated residue of prehistoric cooking. This is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dated to the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and the cracked, spent stones were raked aside after each use. Over time, those discarded stones built up into the characteristic horseshoe-shaped or subcircular mounds that survive today.

What gives this particular example a little extra interest is that it does not stand alone. It belongs to a cluster of four fulachta fiadh recorded in the same area, suggesting repeated or sustained activity at this location over time, or perhaps the use of separate cooking sites by a community working the surrounding landscape. The boggy ground that now frames the mound is likely part of the reason these sites were chosen in the first place; fulachta fiadh are almost always found near a reliable water source, whether a stream, a spring, or waterlogged ground. The proximity of four such sites to one another in north Cork points to a stretch of land that was, in the Bronze Age, considerably more frequented than its present quiet appearance might suggest.