Kiln - lime, Curraduff, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Curraduff, Co. Cork

On the southern bank of the Glenlara River in Curraduff, a lime kiln sits built into the natural slope of the flood plain, its random-rubble wall still holding an earthen core behind it.

It is an unassuming structure, easy to pass without a second thought, yet it represents a piece of agricultural infrastructure that once shaped how land across Ireland was farmed.

Lime kilns were used to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime that farmers spread on acidic soils to improve fertility. This example was constructed with the slope doing much of the structural work, the hillside effectively acting as a retaining body for the kiln's back wall. The front elevation, facing north, stands roughly 3.5 metres high and 4.5 metres wide, with an arched recess cut into it measuring about 1.6 metres high and just over 2 metres wide, where the burnt lime would have been drawn out. At the rear, sloping slabs lead down to a stoking hole and an opening at the base, through which fuel was fed to maintain the fire. Behind the structure, a funnel, now heavily overgrown, marks where limestone and fuel were loaded in from above. The whole arrangement is typical of the draw kiln design, in which the charge of stone and fuel was fed in at the top and the finished lime extracted from below in a more or less continuous process.

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