It measures roughly ten and a half metres east to west and nearly nine metres north to south, rising only half a metre above the surrounding pasture. What fills it is not earth or stone rubble in any ordinary sense, but burnt and fire-cracked material, the accumulated debris of repeated heating. That is what makes it unusual: this is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically identified by precisely this kind of dark, scorched mound beside a water source. The standard interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, and the shattered, spent stones were discarded into a heap over time. The mound at Meengorman is that heap.

The site may be the same one noted by a researcher named Bowman in 1934, who recorded a fulacht fiadh on land belonging to a P. Cotter in the area. If so, the mound has been sitting in the same pasture, beside the same stream, for at least ninety years of modern record-keeping, and a very great deal longer before that. Fulachtaí fia are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though some examples have earlier or later dates, and their precise function has been debated, with cooking, bathing, and textile processing all proposed at various sites. This particular example adds little to that debate on its own, but its modest dimensions and streamside position are entirely typical of the form.