Kiln - lime, Moyge, Co. Cork
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Kilns
A lime kiln that survived long enough to be formally recorded, only to disappear shortly afterwards, is a particular kind of archival ghost.
The kiln at Moyge, in north County Cork, occupied a working quarry on the northern side of the avenue leading to Moyge House, and it is now gone, demolished after the site was inspected and noted. What remains is the paper trail of its existence across successive editions of the Ordnance Survey.
Lime kilns were simple but essential structures, typically built into a hillside or quarry face, where limestone was loaded from the top and burned with fuel to produce quicklime for agriculture and building. The Moyge example followed this pattern, with a brick-arched recess at the front elevation serving as the draw arch through which the finished lime was raked out. By the time it was inspected, the rear of that recess had already collapsed, and the funnel and core above it had shed their material down into the void. The quarry itself appears on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, though without a kiln marked. The kiln appears by the 1905 edition, and both quarry and kiln are shown together on the 1936 edition, suggesting the operation was active across at least the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, serving the estate at Moyge House roughly two hundred metres to the east.