What it actually represents is a cooking site used by people in prehistoric Ireland, most likely during the Bronze Age. Fulachtaí fia, as they are known in the plural, are among the most commonly recorded prehistoric monument types in the country. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and repeating the process until food was cooked. The cracked and discarded stones accumulated over time into the characteristic horseshoe shape that survives to this day.

The example at Poulnalour sits in low-lying, waterlogged pasture, with a pond to the north-east and rocky, wet ground to the north and north-west. The location is no accident. Fulachtaí fia are almost always found near reliable water sources, and this site sits at the southern edge of an area that the Ordnance Survey's 1842 six-inch map explicitly marked as "Liable to Floods". The mound itself is relatively modest, measuring roughly ten metres east to west and eight metres north to south, with the characteristic opening facing south. It was noted on Robinson's map in 1977. What makes the spot quietly arresting is that it does not stand alone: a second fulacht fia lies approximately 122 metres to the north, suggesting that this stretch of damp ground was a place people returned to, or perhaps that different groups made use of the same reliable water supply across a period of time.