Limekilns were industrial furnaces used to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime for use as mortar, whitewash, and agricultural fertiliser. They were once a common feature of Irish landscapes, and the fact that three survive within the Blarney Castle demesne alone suggests the estate once had a significant appetite for lime production.

The two kilns here are built against one another, their fronts facing west. The northern kiln is the larger of the pair, roughly five metres high and nearly ten metres wide, with an arched recess a little over two metres tall opening into the draw arch where the burned lime would have been raked out. The voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones forming the arch, are roughly cut. Behind the arch, sloping slabs direct material downward into a circular brick-lined funnel, approximately three metres in diameter, where the limestone and fuel were loaded from above. The second kiln, added to the south side, is narrower at just under four metres wide, but otherwise follows the same design, though here the voussoirs are dressed stone rather than rough-cut, suggesting a slightly more careful finish. A ramp to the rear of the structure would have allowed workers to bring raw limestone and fuel up to the top of the kilns for loading, a standard arrangement that made the heavy work of charging the kiln somewhat more manageable.

The site is partially overgrown today, which gives it a quality quite different from the manicured surroundings of the more visited parts of the demesne. The variations between the two kilns, different arch dimensions, different quality of stonework, suggest they were not built simultaneously, and the ensemble as a whole is a quietly legible record of how a large Irish estate managed its own material needs.