Kiln - lime, Glen, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Glen, Co. Cork

Tucked against a natural slope on the south-west side of a laneway in Glen, County Cork, this lime kiln is a quietly instructive piece of rural industrial archaeology.

Lime kilns were once commonplace across Ireland, used to burn limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime, which farmers spread on acidic soils to improve fertility and which builders used in mortars and plasters. Most have fallen into neglect or been demolished, making a well-preserved example worth pausing over.

This particular structure measures roughly four metres high and just under five metres wide at the front, its west-facing elevation tapering slightly inwards as it rises, a feature that gives the whole thing a faintly monumental quality from a distance. The walls are random-rubble sandstone encasing an earthen core, with a rough buttress added to the south side, presumably for stability. At the base of the front face sits a corbelled recess, the draw arch, standing about two and a half metres high and two metres deep, where workers would have raked out the burned lime once a firing was complete. Sloping slabs line the rear of this recess. Above it, at either corner of the front elevation, two beam holes survive, suggesting some kind of timber framework once stood here, possibly to support a loading platform or shelter. The funnel at the top, into which layers of limestone and fuel were packed before firing, has been infilled, its diameter originally around two metres. The kiln is built into the slope in the usual way, allowing the top to be loaded from ground level at the rear while the draw arch remained accessible from the lower ground at the front.

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