Keyhole-shaped in plan, with a firing chamber to the east set at a lower level than the drying chamber to the west, it preserves not just the structure but the evidence of its final working day. The fire was never cleaned out before that last use, leaving two layers of in-situ oxidisation and associated charcoal still sitting in the firing chamber. The drying chamber, where grain would have been spread above the rising heat to reduce moisture before milling or storage, held a charcoal-rich silt as its parting deposit. Eight fills in total were recorded across the monument, a stratigraphy that reads almost like a slow biography of abandonment.

The kiln came to light during the construction of a residential development by Cairn Homes at Farrankelly, a circumstance that has become one of the more reliable mechanisms for uncovering buried archaeology in Ireland. The process began with a geophysical survey carried out in 2015 by Joanna Leigh, which identified two circular ditch-type anomalies measuring approximately 11.25 metres and 12.25 metres in diameter, along with crop marks visible in the southwest corner of the proposed development. Gradiometry, a technique that detects subtle variations in the magnetic properties of soil to map buried features without breaking ground, suggested these ditches sat within a larger, less well-defined circular feature that may represent an enclosure of some kind. Testing followed in 2017 under Rob Lynch and Enda Lydon of IAC Archaeology, identifying three areas of archaeological interest. It was excavation in 2020, led by Muireann Ní Cheallacháin, that fully exposed the kiln. The upper three fills, which contained large stones, were interpreted as deliberate backfill deposited after the kiln went out of use, possibly the collapsed or dismantled remains of an above-ground structure that once stood over it.