It is a lime kiln, a type of industrial furnace used to convert limestone into quicklime by burning it at intense heat. The resulting material was spread across acidic soils to improve their fertility, and kilns like this one were scattered across the Irish countryside in considerable numbers during the nineteenth century. What makes this particular example quietly arresting is how completely the landscape has reclaimed it.

Built sometime in the mid to late nineteenth century, the kiln is set into a west-facing slope on the west side of a minor road, a typical arrangement that allowed carts to be loaded and unloaded at different levels. The front wall, constructed from random rubble sandstone, stands roughly 3.8 metres high and just over 2 metres wide. At its centre is a lintelled recess, the draw arch through which the burned lime would have been raked out, measuring around 2 metres high, 1.3 metres wide, and 2.4 metres deep, with sloping slabs at the rear. Above this, the funnel, where the limestone and fuel were fed in from the top, is stone-lined and approximately 1.4 metres in diameter. The whole structure is now heavily overgrown, absorbed into the pasture around it.