That front elevation preserves a segmental-arched recess, roughly a metre and a quarter high and two metres wide, with a lintel visible towards the rear. The funnel, the upper chamber into which limestone and fuel would have been loaded for burning, has since been filled in, leaving the structure looking more like a fragment of a wall than the industrial feature it once was.

Lime kilns of this kind were once common fixtures across the Irish countryside. Farmers burned limestone to produce quicklime, which was then slaked with water and spread on fields to reduce soil acidity, a practice particularly widespread from the eighteenth century through to the late nineteenth. This kiln at Lyradane appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, which places its active life somewhere within that period of intensive agricultural improvement. The technique of building kilns directly into a hillside was standard; the slope allowed carts to approach from above for loading, while the arched draw-hole at the base gave access to rake out the burnt lime once firing was complete. The segmental arch at Lyradane, a shallow curve rather than a full semicircle, is a fairly typical piece of vernacular stonework for such structures.