Before that, it took the distinctive horseshoe shape that makes a fulacht fia immediately recognisable: a curved mound, open at one end, formed over centuries from the accumulated debris of repeated heating and cooking. The opening here faced east, as local memory recorded it, before the mound was levelled.

A fulacht fia, sometimes called a burnt mound, is among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland. The basic process involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, and using that hot water for cooking, textile processing, or possibly bathing. The burnt and shattered stones, discarded after use, built up around the trough into the characteristic horseshoe shape over time. Most examples date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though the tradition persisted longer in some areas. The site at Meenagloghrane sits in land that has since been brought into pasture, around 150 metres east of a stream, the proximity to water being typical of these monuments. A second possible example lies roughly 70 metres to the west-southwest, suggesting this stretch of ground may have seen repeated or prolonged use across prehistory.

What survives today is subtle: a low, grass-covered spread rather than an upstanding mound, with the dark, charcoal-rich soil and heat-fractured stones just visible beneath the surface. The levelling in 1967 removed the most legible part of the monument, but the underlying deposit, the true archaeological record of those repeated firings and discarded stones, remains in the ground.