The monument in question is a fulacht fia, a class of ancient burnt mound found widely across Ireland, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped heap of fire-cracked stone and charcoal left behind by a method of boiling water in a trough, probably used for cooking, and possibly for other purposes. By the time anyone came to inspect this particular one in 1999, it had become invisible at ground level.

The site sits on slightly raised ground roughly thirty metres to the north-west or west-north-west of Lough Avalla, and it appeared on Robinson's map as early as 1977. When the Record of Monuments and Places was compiled in 1996, it was listed under the collective heading of fulachta fia alongside a second example located around twenty metres to the north-north-east. A map annotation by Tom Coffey raises the possibility of a third monument somewhere in the immediate vicinity, which would make this a small cluster of related prehistoric activity on the same modest piece of ground. Whether the cluster reflects repeated use of the same water source over time, or simply the survival of a once-denser pattern of such sites across the landscape, is not something the available evidence settles.