It is not much to look at now, the ground having been disturbed in the process, but what the dark stain in the earth represents is a small, legible fragment of an industrial operation that reshaped an entire valley.

Local tradition holds that the woodland here was felled and converted to charcoal in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century to supply the ironworks established near Kenmare by Sir William Petty. Petty, who is better known as a surveyor and political economist behind the Down Survey of Ireland in the 1650s, was also a significant landowner in south Kerry, and the ironworks formed part of his commercial enterprises in the region. The production of charcoal, made by slowly burning wood in low-oxygen conditions to produce a fuel far more energy-dense than raw timber, was essential to iron smelting before the widespread adoption of coke. To keep a furnace running, enormous quantities of wood were needed, and the forests of valleys like Maulagowna were the obvious local source. The clearance of those woodlands was not incidental damage; it was the point.