A lime kiln is a structure in which limestone was burned at high temperatures to produce quicklime, an essential material for mortaring stone, whitewashing walls, and improving agricultural land. This one faces south, its front face standing six metres high and nearly five and a half metres wide, giving it a presence that is easy to underestimate until you are standing in front of it.

The kiln's south-facing front is pierced by an arched recess a little over two and a half metres high and wide, and two metres deep, with a wooden lintel and plaster infilling above it. A stoking-hole is still evident, the point through which fuel was fed to maintain the burn. The sloping slabs visible at the rear are typical of the way these structures managed the draw of heat and the removal of processed lime from below. The top of the kiln is enclosed by a stone wall, roughly one and three quarter metres high, though the rear and upper sections are now heavily overgrown, the structure merging back into the slope it was built against. Kilns of this kind were once common across Cork and the wider Irish countryside, their placement against hillsides being practical rather than incidental: the slope allowed workers to load limestone and fuel from above while collecting the burnt lime from the lower opening below.