That last detail is what makes it quietly compelling. Corn-drying kilns were a practical necessity across rural Ireland for centuries, used to dry grain before milling in a climate that rarely cooperated with the harvest, but this particular example was excavated, measured, and described in careful detail, and still yielded nothing that would fix it to a century or even a broad period. The archaeology simply went quiet on the question.

The kiln was excavated by Ó Ríordáin and Foy in 1941, and their report remains the basis for what we know about its construction. It followed the standard form of such structures: a narrow lintelled flue, the channel through which heat travelled, leading into a stone-lined circular bowl where the grain would have been spread to dry. The flue was just under half a metre high at its south-east-facing entrance and nearly two metres long, its sides built from small upright slabs with horizontal slabs laid across them in places, and its floor partly paved with yellow clay visible on either side of the central strip. The bowl at the far end measured just over a metre across, lined with upright stones and several courses of smaller ones set in clay mortar. By the time of excavation, most of the upright stones along the western half had gone missing, and there was nothing to suggest the bowl had ever been covered over. Two separate charcoal deposits were found, one across the floor of the flue and another just outside the entrance, the clearest physical trace that fire had been lit here and grain had been dried, even if the when remains unanswered.