Lime kilns, structures used to burn limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime for spreading on fields and improving soil acidity, had been a fixture of the Irish countryside since at least the eighteenth century. By the mid-twentieth century, commercially produced ground limestone had largely replaced the need to burn your own. That Mr Fitzgerald went to the considerable effort of constructing one in that year, and then used it for only a short period, gives the kiln a quietly melancholy character.

The structure itself sits on the southern side of an early twentieth-century roadway, set into a shallow depression in the ground, which is a typical arrangement allowing the heat of the burning chamber to be managed more efficiently. It is built of random-rubble sandstone and retains its earthen core. The front elevation, which faces south and stands 4.5 metres high, has been widened to a present span of 7.2 metres. At its centre is a bluntly pointed segmental-arched recess, roughly 1.93 metres high and 1.85 metres wide, corbelled, meaning the stonework steps inward, toward the rear. A stone-faced earthen ramp extends from the back of the structure for 16.5 metres, now overgrown; workers would once have used it to haul limestone and fuel up to the top of the kiln for loading.