The discovery, passed down through local information rather than formal excavation, is the kind of thing that makes ordinary domestic ground feel considerably less ordinary.

What was found is consistent with a fulacht fia, a type of site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The term refers to a mound of fire-cracked stones, usually situated near a water source, which accumulated over repeated use of a simple but effective cooking method: stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough, bringing the water to a boil quickly enough to cook meat. Over time, the shattered, heat-damaged stones piled up into a distinctive horseshoe-shaped mound. At Killissane, the site sits on the south-western side of a pond, which fits the pattern almost exactly. The burnt material turned up during construction work, and some of it remains visible in the garden, neither excavated nor removed, simply present in the ground where it has been for perhaps three or four thousand years.