The difference in height is not decay alone but design: lime kilns were typically built into hillsides or natural inclines so that workers could load fuel and limestone from the top while drawing the burned lime out from the arched opening below, letting gravity do much of the work.

This particular kiln is roughly rectangular in plan, measuring around six metres north to south and eight metres east to west. Its southern elevation retains a lintelled recess, meaning an opening framed by a horizontal stone lintel rather than an arch, running about 1.75 metres high and 1.5 metres wide, with sloping slabs set to the rear of the chamber. Above, a circular funnel roughly 1.5 metres in diameter, which would once have drawn air through the burning charge of stone and fuel, is now almost completely infilled with debris. Lime kilns like this one were a fixture of the Irish rural landscape from at least the seventeenth century onward, producing quicklime that farmers spread on acidic land to improve soil fertility, or used in the making of mortar for building. A working kiln required enormous quantities of fuel, often turf or coal, and the process produced intense heat over many hours, which made them both useful and hazardous structures in the life of a townland.