Seven of these platforms were almost certainly used for charcoal burning, a process in which carefully stacked timber was covered with earth or turf and allowed to smoulder slowly, starved of oxygen, until the wood converted into the dense, high-heat fuel that smelters and metalworkers depended on. The remaining two platforms may have served as hut stands, sheltering the colliers, as charcoal burners were known, who would have tended the slow burns around the clock to prevent them flaring or collapsing.

The platforms vary considerably in scale, ranging from a modest 5 metres by 3.6 metres up to 18 metres by 13 metres, suggesting that operations here were not casual or occasional. Charcoal production on this kind of organised, multi-platform basis points to a sustained local demand, most likely connected to the ironworking and craft activities that would have supported a monastic settlement as significant as Glendalough. The site was noted by Healy in 1972, and while the platforms sit close to one of the valley's most visited ecclesiastical monuments, Reefert Church itself a small Romanesque ruin associated with the kings of Leinster, the industrial landscape around it has attracted comparatively little attention.