Among the most quietly revealing finds were three corn-drying kilns uncovered within an early medieval enclosure at Ballynacarriga, one of which survives in fragmentary but legible form.

Corn-drying kilns were a common feature of early medieval Irish farming life, used to dry harvested grain before milling or storage, particularly important given Ireland's damp climate. This example is what archaeologists call a keyhole-shaped type, a design in which a long, narrow flue connects to a broader bowl at one end, the whole arrangement resembling the outline of a keyhole when viewed from above. The kiln ran on a north-west to south-east axis and measured around five metres in length. The bowl, positioned at the north-western end, was shallow and irregular, barely twenty centimetres deep, with three large angular stones along its edge that may once have formed part of a stone lining. The flue, roughly forty centimetres wide, was best preserved towards its southern end, where fragments of its original stone lining were still in place. Patches of oxidised clay and a fill of charcoal-rich dark brown clay found throughout both the bowl and the flue tell a consistent story: this structure was used repeatedly at high temperatures, enough to thoroughly decay and discolour the stonework. The excavators noted that the flue lining was considerably decayed and heavily oxidised, direct physical evidence of sustained, intense heat. Two further kilns were found nearby within the same enclosure, suggesting an agricultural settlement of some organisational complexity, where grain processing was carried out on a meaningful scale.