Kiln - lime, An Doinín Álainn, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, An Doinín Álainn, Co. Cork

A lime kiln sitting in a pasture field at An Doinín Álainn in County Cork would be unremarkable enough on its own terms, except for one detail: the structure you see today is not standing where it was built.

In 1993, ahead of roadworks, the entire kiln was carefully dismantled and reassembled roughly 200 metres to the north of its original position, preserving a piece of agricultural infrastructure that might otherwise have been demolished and forgotten.

Lime kilns were once a common feature of the Irish countryside, used to burn limestone at high temperatures and produce quicklime for spreading on acidic soils or for use in mortar and whitewash. This particular example is a rectangular structure, approximately four metres north to south and five metres east to west, with a front elevation of around 3.5 metres dropping to just 1.1 metres at the rear, a profile that reflects its position on a break in slope. The southern face carries a lintelled recess, roughly 1.3 metres high and 1.35 metres wide, with sloping slabs running back into the body of the kiln. Above this sits a circular stone-lined funnel, just under 1.5 metres in diameter, now half filled with rubble. According to research carried out at the time of the 1993 relocation, the kiln was probably built in the mid-1830s under instruction from the Colthurst family, a landed family with significant holdings in mid-Cork during the nineteenth century. The decade places its construction in a period of considerable agricultural improvement activity across Ireland, when landlord-directed liming programmes were actively encouraged as a means of improving crop yields on poor ground.

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