Kiln - lime, Ballyellis, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Ballyellis, Co. Cork

A five-metre wall of overgrown rubble rising from a quarry floor is not the kind of thing that draws much attention, yet the lime kiln at Ballyellis in North Cork is a surprisingly complete example of a structure that once shaped the agricultural landscape across rural Ireland.

Lime kilns were used to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime that farmers spread on acidic soils to improve fertility. Most have long since collapsed or been cleared away. This one survives, built directly against the quarry's rock face, with its northern front elevation still standing and a projecting wall to the west enclosing what would have been a working forecourt.

The kiln's construction follows a form common to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when improving landlords and tenant farmers alike invested in local lime production. Random-rubble walls, meaning loosely coursed stone without dressed faces, encase an earthen core, and a buttress on the eastern side provides additional support. At the heart of the structure is a lintelled corbelled recess, roughly three metres high and nearly three metres deep, with sloping slabs at the rear and a stoking hole through which fuel was fed to maintain the burn. Above this, a limestone-lined funnel, around two and a half metres in diameter, held the raw limestone charge. That funnel is now almost entirely infilled with debris and vegetation. A second kiln once stood to the east of this one, but it has since been removed, leaving this as the sole remaining structure on the site.

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