These structures were once workhorses of the agricultural world, built to burn limestone at high temperatures and produce quicklime, which farmers spread across acidic land to improve soil fertility. In a county where thin, calcium-poor soils overlay much of the terrain, a kiln like this would have been a genuinely practical asset, serving a townland's agricultural needs across generations.

Lime kilns in Ireland date from the medieval period through to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the greatest concentration of use falling during the improving agriculture movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when landlords and tenants alike invested in the process of sweetening the land. The typical kiln is a stone-built bowl or draw-kiln, set into a hillside or earth bank to allow the intense heat to be sustained, with an opening at the base through which the burnt lime could be raked out. Limestone and fuel, usually turf or coal, were loaded alternately from the top. The remains at Pollacorragune represent this broader tradition of small-scale, locally operated lime production that once dotted the Connacht countryside.