To a passing eye it might look like a natural terrace or a trick of the terrain, but it was in fact shaped by hand for a very specific industrial purpose: the making of charcoal. A mound kiln, the type for which this platform was designed, involved stacking cordwood into a dome-shaped pile, covering it with turf or earth to restrict airflow, and then slowly smouldering the whole thing over several days. The process required a flat, stable working surface, which is precisely what was carved out here from the mountain slope.

The platform was identified by Michael Monahan and Edward Butler, and it shares its basic design with a cluster of similar platforms on the south-west-facing slope of Knockroe hill, part of the same Blackstairs range, roughly six kilometres to the north-east. The Gowlin example measures approximately 7.9 metres north-east to south-west and 6.8 metres north-west to south-east. Its rear south-east portion has been cut more than a metre into the natural hillside and shored up with stones and boulders, a technique known as revetment, where a facing of stone is used to hold an earthen edge in place. The north-west edge, also about a metre high, is defined by a scarp with two surviving courses of stone revetment, and there appears to be a slightly wider secondary platform below it, though this lower feature may simply be the result of stonework that has partially collapsed over time. The south-west edge of the platform is less well preserved, likely disturbed when the surrounding forestry was planted. The site looks out over extensive views to the south-west, west, and north, across the plain of the River Barrow far below, a reminder that these mountain slopes were once worked as part of a broader industrial landscape rather than left as wilderness.