Lime kilns of this kind were once a common fixture of the Irish agricultural landscape. Farmers and landowners built them to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime that could be spread on acidic soils to improve their fertility, or used in the making of mortar. Most have long since collapsed or been absorbed into field boundaries, which makes a relatively complete example like this one quietly remarkable.

The construction follows a pattern typical of rural Irish kilns. Random-rubble walls, meaning fieldstone laid without any regular coursing, encase an earthen core, giving the structure its bulk and insulation. The southeast-facing front elevation contains a stone-arched recess, while the base is pierced by a lintelled opening, the draw hole through which the rendered lime would have been raked out after firing. At the rear, sloping slabs surround a stoking hole where fuel was fed into the fire, and an earthen ramp allowed workers to tip limestone into the brick-lined funnel at the top. The brick lining of the funnel, more resistant to the intense heat than ordinary rubble, is a practical detail that speaks to the accumulated know-how behind what looks, from a distance, like a simple mound of stone.