It measures roughly seventeen metres east to west and just over fourteen metres north to south, making it a reasonably substantial example of what archaeologists call a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically in wet or waterlogged locations close to a water source. The centre of this particular mound has been worn flat by cattle over the years, leaving a shallow interior basin ringed by a low bank that rises to about three-quarters of a metre on the outer edge.

Fulachtaí fia, sometimes called burnt mounds, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, yet they remain quietly mysterious. The working theory is that they functioned as outdoor cooking places, most likely during the Bronze Age. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, then using the hot water to cook meat. The shattered, heat-crazed stones were raked out and discarded, and over generations these discarded heaps built up into the horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds that survive today. At Toorard, a shallow oval depression about two metres wide and half a metre deep extends northward from the main mound, which may represent the remnants of the original trough or a later disturbance in the same damp ground where the site was first established.