Lime kilns were simple but essential structures, typically built into a hillside or bank, where limestone was burned at high temperature to produce quicklime. That quicklime was then slaked with water and spread across acidic boggy soils to improve their fertility, or mixed into mortar for building work. They were the agricultural infrastructure of their day, found on estates and smallholdings alike, and the fact that this one at Curraghduff has been recorded as a monument at all speaks to how thoroughly the landscape of Connacht was shaped by that kind of everyday, practical industry.

The name Curraghduff, from the Irish currach dubh, suggests dark or black marsh ground, the sort of wet, peaty terrain where improving the soil with lime would have been an obvious priority for any farmer trying to make the land productive. Kilns of this type were particularly common from the eighteenth century onward, when agricultural improvement became a preoccupation of landlords and tenants across Ireland, though many earlier examples exist. The raw material, limestone, is abundant across much of Galway, which made local burning a practical alternative to purchasing processed lime elsewhere. A kiln built close to a source of stone and fuel could supply a farm or a small community through a season's burning.