These stone-built structures, typically shaped like a bowl or funnel set into a hillside, were used to burn limestone at intense heat, producing quicklime that farmers spread on acidic soils to improve fertility. They were once as common and as necessary as a well or a ditch, yet most now go unnoticed, their function long obsolete and their forms slowly being absorbed back into the landscape.

Lime kilns of this kind were in widespread use in Ireland from at least the seventeenth century through to the late nineteenth, when cheaper industrially produced lime made local burning largely uneconomical. The process required a continuous supply of both limestone and fuel, usually turf or wood, and kilns were typically sited with this practicality in mind, close to a source of stone and accessible by cart track. The placename Muingyroogeen suggests a small, possibly boggy or scrubby townland, the kind of marginal ground where improving the soil through liming would have made a real difference to what could be grown.