This is part of a mining complex that extracted sulphur, calamine, lead, silver, copper, and zinc across several distinct workings, and whose visible remains include two Cornish engine houses, a form of pumping structure developed in Cornwall to manage water in deep mines, along with several other industrial buildings and numerous shafts, most dating to the nineteenth century. Somewhere to the north, about 500 metres from the early mine entrance, grass-covered wall-footings mark what may have been a settlement for the miners themselves.

How far back the digging goes is genuinely contested. The historian Gleeson, writing in 1937, argued that thirteenth-century references to mining in Tipperary pointed specifically to these hills, and that a petition from Irish miners to the Exchequer dated 1303 originated from the nearby parish of Kilmore. Cowman, revisiting the question in 1988, was more cautious, noting that the medieval documents name no specific location and could apply to any mine in the county. What is certain is that by 1631, two men named Whitmore and Webb had been granted mining rights at the hill then known as Knockaunderrick, and the Civil Survey of the mid-seventeenth century refers to the "silver mines of Knockan Idirke" in the townlands of Ballygowen and Erenagh. The early mine cut into the cliff near the ruins of Dunally Castle may be the very workings described in a patent issued by King Charles I as the "Royal mines of Dunaille or Knockanderry". Whether activity here stretches back into prehistory remains an open question; no physical evidence for prehistoric mining has yet been found, though the possibility has not been ruled out.