Lime kilns were the workhorses of pre-industrial agriculture, used to burn limestone at high temperatures and produce quicklime, which farmers spread on acidic soils to improve their fertility. This one is modest in scale, but the care taken in its construction is quietly evident.

The kiln is built from random-rubble shale, the rough uncoursed stonework typical of rural industrial structures of the period. What sets it apart slightly is the front elevation, which faces north-east and features a stone-arched recess rising to around 1.8 metres. The arch is formed with dressed limestone voussoirs, the precisely cut wedge-shaped stones that give a round arch its structural integrity, a detail that suggests some attention to craft in what might otherwise have been a purely functional structure. Behind this outer arch sits a second, lower internal arch, though the rear of the recess has since been removed. The kiln appears on the 1904 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which places it on the northern side of the road and confirms it was a recognised feature of the local landscape at that time, almost certainly already a generation or two old by then.