Its ivy-clad eastern face rises to about 5.5 metres, built from random-rubble limestone walls encasing a roughly rectangular core measuring around 6 metres east to west and 7.5 metres north to south. For something that was essentially a furnace for burning rock, it carries a quiet architectural coherence.

A lime kiln works by loading limestone into a stone-lined funnel from above, burning it at high temperature with fuel fed through a stoking hole lower down, and drawing off the resulting quicklime through an opening at the base. This kiln follows that arrangement closely. The front elevation features a corbelled recess, a shallow alcove formed by projecting stones rather than a true arch, measuring roughly 2.85 metres high, 2.2 metres wide, and 2.7 metres deep. Stepped inner lintels frame the stoking hole within the recess, and sloping slabs run to the rear. Above the recess, a ledge is visible on the face of the wall. The stone-lined funnel at the top, around 2 metres in diameter, is partially infilled now but still legible. Quicklime produced in structures like this was spread on fields to reduce soil acidity and improve pasture, making kilns a practical fixture of farming life across Cork and the wider country from at least the seventeenth century through to the late nineteenth, when imported lime and artificial fertilisers gradually displaced them.