Local knowledge tells a different story. According to information passed on by K. Flaherty in 1993, this hollow in the ground was once worked as a mine, extracting iron ore that fed a now-vanished ironworks near Woodford town.

The connection to that ironworks, recorded separately in the archaeological record, gives the site its particular interest. Ironworks in rural Ireland were relatively uncommon outside of Ulster, and those that did operate typically depended on a reliable local supply of ore as much as on timber or water power. If the Cappaghcon mine was indeed the source material for the Woodford operation, the two sites together represent a small industrial chain that has left almost no trace above ground. The mine itself has never been formally examined, and what survives is little more than the cave opening, its mouth now partly closed, hinting at something that was once worked and then quietly abandoned.