The arch, nearly three metres high and over two metres wide, opens onto a chamber that reaches back two and a half metres, and a stoking hole survives at the rear, the point where fuel would have been fed into the structure to sustain the intense heat required for the burning process. The top of the kiln has been overtaken by vegetation, though the outline of the funnel, the bowl-shaped depression into which limestone was loaded from above, remains visible through the growth.

Lime kilns like this one were once a familiar feature of the Irish countryside, built by farmers and landowners to produce quicklime from locally sourced limestone. The process involved stacking layers of stone and fuel inside the kiln and firing it for days at a time, the resulting quicklime then slaked with water and spread across fields to reduce soil acidity and improve agricultural yields. They were also used in the production of mortar for building. The practice was widespread from the seventeenth century onward and peaked during the agricultural improvements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after which cheap imported lime and changing farming methods rendered most kilns redundant. The Peafield example, built into the natural slope so that the hillside itself forms part of the structure, follows a standard and practical design: the bank supports the rear of the kiln while the tall southern facade allows easy access to the draw hole at the base.