It is a lime kiln, the kind of industrial remnant that once dotted the Irish countryside in considerable numbers and now goes almost entirely unnoticed. These kilns were used to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime that farmers spread across acidic soils to improve fertility, or that builders mixed into mortar. At their peak of use, through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were as ordinary a feature of the rural landscape as a ditch or a gate. Today, most are either demolished or so overgrown as to be invisible.

The Dromalour kiln is built from random rubble, the rough uncoursed stonework typical of vernacular agricultural construction, with the rubble walls encasing a fired inner core. The front elevation retains a tall lintelled recess, the opening through which the spent lime would have been raked out once burning was complete. At the rear, the remains of sloping slabs are still visible; these would have formed part of the charging platform or back structure, allowing fuel and limestone to be fed down into the kiln from above. The rear of the structure is now heavily overgrown, which both obscures and, in its way, preserves what remains.