Corn-drying kilns, in their simplest form, were stone or earth structures built to apply low heat to harvested grain, either to ease the separation of grain from chaff or to dry it sufficiently for storage. What makes Baysrath unusual is not the presence of kilns as such, but the sheer number of them concentrated within roughly 1.8 hectares, alongside other monuments spanning the Late Neolithic to the early medieval period.

The kilns came to light during excavations carried out in 2006 and 2007, ahead of road improvement works on the N9/N10 route between Kilcullen and Waterford. What emerged was not a single-phase site but a layered sequence of activity. The kilns varied in form, including keyhole-shaped, figure-of-eight, and T-shaped examples, and these different designs were in use from the Iron Age through to the early medieval period. Interestingly, although certain kiln forms appear in both periods, the types of cereals being processed differed between them, suggesting shifts in farming practice or crop preference over time. Large quantities of cereal remains were recovered across the excavated area, pointing clearly to grain drying as the primary function rather than, say, metalworking or pottery firing.