It measures roughly 8.4 metres east to west and 5 metres north to south, rising to about 0.7 metres at its highest point, with an opening nearly 3 metres wide facing north. To a passing eye it might look like nothing more than a slight rise in rough ground, but its distinctive shape and composition mark it out as a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet persistently mysterious monument types in the Irish archaeological landscape.

Fulachtaí fia are the horseshoe or kidney-shaped spreads of heat-shattered stone that accumulate around ancient cooking sites, typically Bronze Age in date. The accepted interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, allowing meat to be cooked. Over repeated use, the thermally fractured fragments were raked out and piled to the sides, gradually building up the characteristic mound. The north-facing opening at Meens corresponds to where the trough would have sat, fed perhaps by a nearby water source. Thousands of these sites survive across Ireland, yet each one represents repeated, deliberate activity by people who returned to the same spot, built fires, and prepared food over what may have been generations.