The result is a roughly oval platform, about nine metres by ten, cut into the natural slope and shored up with stone revetment on its uphill side. It looks, at a glance, like a terrace cleared for some forgotten building, but no structure was ever intended here. This was a working surface for making charcoal, and the careful levelling was the whole point.

Charcoal-making platforms of this type were designed to support mound kilns, a method in which stacked wood was covered with turf, bracken, or earth to restrict airflow and allow slow, oxygen-limited combustion. The process required a flat, stable base, which on a hillside meant cutting into the slope to create one. This particular example, on the lower south-westerly slopes of Knockroe hill south of Mount Leinster, is one of at least seven such platforms identified on the same hillslope by researchers Michael Monahan and Edward Butler. Together they suggest an organised, industrial-scale operation rather than occasional opportunistic burning. The platforms overlook the Aughnabrisky River valley, and the south-westerly aspect would have given workers some shelter from prevailing weather. The rear north-easterly edge of the platform is cut roughly 0.8 metres into the slope, with partial stone revetment still visible; the opposite south-westerly edge is defined by an earthen scarp. Coniferous forestry has since been planted across the hillside, with trees now growing on the platform itself.

The site sits in terrain that rewards careful looking. The granite boulders scattered across the slope are natural, but the abrupt levelling of the ground is not, and once you know what a charcoal platform is meant to look like, the geometry of this one becomes legible against the surrounding hillside.