The chunks of charcoal still visible in the surrounding earthen bank give it away. This is a charcoal-making platform, the kind of feature that once appeared wherever woodland industry and metalworking or glassmaking intersected, and it survives here in a remarkably legible form.

The platform sits within an oak wood on a north-east-facing slope near the south-east corner of the lough, and its construction reveals careful, practical thinking about an awkward site. Because the ground falls away steeply, the builders compensated by raising the south-east portion of the interior by about a metre and cutting the north-west portion roughly half a metre into the hillside, creating a level working surface. This levelled area, known in industrial archaeology as a pitstead or hearth platform, would have held the carefully stacked wood pile at its centre, covered with earth or turves to restrict airflow and allow the slow, oxygen-starved combustion that converts wood into charcoal. A gently scarped bank defines the north-east and south sides, and the south-east section of that bank is faced with stone, suggesting some effort at permanence or reinforcement. The bank along the west and north sides retains the charcoal fragments that make the site's purpose unmistakable.

Oak woodland, of which this site retains genuine remnants, was historically prized for charcoal production because oak burns slowly and yields a dense, high-quality product suitable for iron smelting and smithing. Kerry's surviving ancient oak woods are relatively few, which makes the pairing of an intact platform with its woodland context particularly unusual. The site is not signposted or formally managed, and the interior is covered with accumulated forest debris, so the earthwork is easier to read from the banks than from within.