These structures were once workhorses of the rural Irish economy, used to burn limestone at intense heat to produce quicklime, a material spread on acidic fields to improve soil fertility or used in the making of mortar. This one retains enough of its original form to give a clear sense of how it functioned, and how carefully it was sited.

The kiln is built directly into the slope, a common arrangement that allowed workers to load limestone and fuel from the top while drawing the finished lime from the front at ground level. The front face spans 5.8 metres, and the arched recess, the draw hole where the lime was removed and the fire tended, measures 2.6 metres high, 2.4 metres wide, and roughly 2.5 metres deep. A stoking hole is still evident, the small opening through which the fire beneath the burning charge was fed and managed. The top of the structure is enclosed by a low stone wall, which would have helped contain the load during firing. The eastern side of the kiln has partially collapsed, which is not unusual for a structure of this kind; once agricultural lime production shifted to commercial suppliers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, local kilns were simply abandoned where they stood, left to the slow work of weather and encroaching vegetation.