Bowl hearths are exactly what the name suggests, shallow scooped depressions in the ground, lined or fired until the earth itself records the heat. They are among the most intimate of archaeological features, the literal centre of daily life, cooking, warmth, light.

The excavation took place in 2001 as part of a monitoring programme attached to the N11 road improvement scheme, the kind of archaeological watching brief that runs alongside major infrastructure works to catch whatever the machines disturb. Two hearths and three pits were uncovered. The larger of the two hearths, measuring 1.7 metres in diameter and 0.3 metres deep, yielded a radiocarbon date placing its use somewhere between AD 900 and 1160. One of the associated pits returned a date of AD 1000 to 1240. Together, the features suggest activity at this spot across a period that spans the late Viking age and into the early Norman centuries in Ireland, a time of considerable disruption and change across the country, though what precisely was happening at Kilmurry, who was here and why, the archaeology cannot say.