Kiln - corn-drying, Mashanaglass, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – corn-drying, Mashanaglass, Co. Cork

In a steep-sided glen at Mashanaglass in mid Cork, there is almost nothing left to see, and that near-total absence is itself part of the story.

Beneath the overgrowth of what was once a carefully levelled platform, the faint outline of a corn-drying kiln survives only as an archaeological memory, its physical form deliberately dismantled by whoever last used it, probably centuries ago. The site is connected by an artificial causeway to the remains of a horizontal-wheeled mill roughly 45 metres to the north-west, and the two structures clearly functioned together, the kiln drying harvested grain before it was ground. That pairing, and the earthworks built to link them, suggests a small but purposeful rural industrial complex, not a makeshift arrangement.

When E. M. Fahy excavated the site in 1955, he uncovered an hourglass-shaped pit running almost north to south across the platform. It measured 22 feet 6 inches in length, narrowing to about 2 feet at its midpoint before flaring to nearly 6 feet at its southern end, and was no more than 2 feet deep at its deepest. A corn-drying kiln of this type typically worked by channelling heat from a fire through a flue beneath a perforated floor, drying the grain spread above. At Mashanaglass, Fahy found a 2-inch layer of charcoal across the floor at the northern end, thinning out towards the south, along with scattered large stones in the southern half. He interpreted the pit as the remains of the kiln's flue, with the fire having been lit at the northern end. The evidence also pointed to deliberate dismantling rather than simple abandonment or decay, though the reasons for that are not recorded.

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