Kiln - lime, Manning, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Manning, Co. Cork

In a ruined farmyard in Manning, County Cork, the remains of a lime kiln sit in quiet disrepair, its proportions precise enough to suggest real ambition on the part of whoever built it.

Lime kilns were once a familiar feature of the Irish agricultural landscape, structures in which limestone was burned at high temperatures to produce quicklime, a material used to improve acidic soils and to make mortar for building. This one is substantial enough to have served a working farm or small estate rather than a passing seasonal need.

The kiln's outer shell is built from random-rubble limestone walls, roughly 5.2 metres square, encasing an earthen core. The front elevation rises to 3.3 metres and faces south, an orientation that would have made working conditions more tolerable in colder months. Cut into this face is a lintelled, corbelled recess, a sheltered opening formed by projecting stones rather than a true arch, measuring 1.7 metres high, 1.7 metres wide, and running 2.25 metres deep. A sloping slab at the rear of the recess and a blocked opening at its base hint at the original draw-hole, the slot through which cooled lime was raked out once firing was complete. A ledge runs along the front elevation above the recess, and what appear to be forecourt walls extend to the east and west, giving the structure something of a formal, deliberate arrangement. A later north-south wall was added to the east side of the recess, evidence that the site continued to be used and adapted after the kiln's initial construction. On top of the kiln, a slight depression marks where the funnel once sat, the opening into which limestone and fuel were loaded in alternating layers before firing began.

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