It is, in fact, the remains of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, and one that quietly encodes a whole technology of heat, water, and stone within its modest form.

A fulacht fia typically works by heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boils, a method that leaves behind a characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound of cracked and fire-blackened stone. The example at Rowls Noonan follows this familiar pattern, positioned in low-lying, wet ground to the north-east of a spring, where water would have been reliably accessible. The mound itself is subcircular, measuring roughly 11 metres across in one direction and just under 11 metres in the other, with a surviving height of around 0.45 metres. At its centre there is a depression about 4 metres in diameter and half a metre deep, formed not by ancient activity but by the more recent removal of material from the mound. That disturbance is a small loss; the surrounding spread of burnt stone still preserves the essential shape and scale of a site that has endured, in some form, for thousands of years.