Lime kilns were once a routine feature of the Irish agricultural landscape, stone-built furnaces used to burn limestone or shell into quicklime, which farmers then spread on acidic land to improve fertility. Most have crumbled into anonymous mounds, which makes this one, with its near-complete front face measuring just under six metres across, quietly exceptional.

The structure is more complex than a straightforward agricultural kiln might suggest. The rear is enclosed by a high stone wall, and both the eastern and western elevations are buttressed, giving the building a solidity that speaks to deliberate construction rather than improvised field-work. On the external west elevation, fragmentary remains of a fireplace survive, a detail that hints at the labour involved in tending a burn, which could last several days and required continuous fuel and attention. The funnel, the throat through which charge and fuel were loaded from above, has been infilled, but the overall form of the kiln remains coherent enough to read as a working building rather than a ruin.