The horseshoe shape is not accidental. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, and the curving mound of burnt material is what remains after centuries of use, abandonment, and slow burial beneath the soil.

Fulachtaí fiadh, to use the plural, are among the most common archaeological monuments in the Irish landscape, yet they remain poorly understood in terms of their precise social function. The standard interpretation is that they served as outdoor cooking places, most likely dating to the Bronze Age. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the water to a boil, and using that water to cook meat. The stones, cracked and useless after repeated heating and quenching, were discarded to the side, building up over time into the characteristic horseshoe mound. Proximity to a water source was essential, which is why this example at Meens sits so close to its adjacent stream. The mound here measures roughly eleven metres north to south and nearly seven metres east to west, rising to a modest height of about three quarters of a metre, with the opening of the horseshoe, around four metres wide, facing west. That westward-facing gap is where the trough would have sat, and where the work of the site would have taken place.