Kiln - lime, Glen, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Glen, Co. Cork

In the townland of Glen in north County Cork, a lime kiln sits half-swallowed by vegetation on the western side of a ringfort, tucked into the fosse, the defensive ditch that once encircled the early medieval enclosure.

The two structures belong to entirely different eras, and their proximity is a quiet reminder of how later agricultural life in Ireland repeatedly folded itself into the landscape of an older one, borrowing its earthworks, its hollows, and its ready-cut stone without ceremony or record.

Lime kilns were a fixture of Irish farm life from at least the seventeenth century onward, used to burn limestone at high temperatures and produce quicklime for spreading on acidic fields or for use in mortar. This particular example was built into the fosse of a ringfort, a circular enclosed settlement type common across Ireland from roughly the early medieval period. The kiln faces south, its front elevation presenting a lintelled recess measuring one metre high, one point two metres wide, and two metres deep, the opening through which fuel was loaded and burned material eventually raked out. The ringfort it adjoins has its own separate record, and the relationship between the two structures is one of opportunistic reuse: the existing ditch offered a ready-made hollow into which the kiln's back could be built, reducing the labour of construction considerably. The rear of the kiln is now overgrown, as is much of the surrounding area.

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