Kiln - lime, Kilcarragh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Kilns
A small lime kiln built into a south-facing slope in County Clare might easily be dismissed as a heap of old stone, but its position tells a more considered story.
Tucked just outside the southern wall of a bawn, the enclosing defensive courtyard that typically surrounded an Irish tower house, the kiln sits in close relationship with the remains of Caislean A'Mhagaigh, a tower house now poorly preserved but once a commanding local presence. The combination of military architecture and industrial infrastructure on the same plot is a reminder that the people who built and lived in these structures had practical, daily needs alongside any defensive ones.
The kiln itself is corbelled, meaning the interior is roofed by stones laid in progressively overlapping courses rather than by a true arch, and is constructed entirely of undressed limestone. It measures roughly 1.2 metres in height and 3 metres in width. Lime kilns of this type were used to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime for use in mortar, agricultural improvement, and lime-washing. This one may be contemporary with the adjacent tower house, suggesting a date that could place it within the broader tradition of late medieval tower house construction in Clare, a building type that flourished between roughly the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. The precise date remains uncertain, but the spatial logic is clear enough: whoever maintained the tower house and its bawn likely made use of this kiln in the construction or upkeep of those very walls.