Most rural lime kilns in Ireland were worked hard over decades, burning crushed limestone to produce quicklime for spreading on acidic fields. This one, by contrast, seems to have been raised with considerable care and then almost immediately abandoned to the landscape.

The structure is substantial despite its brief working life. The front wall, built from random rubble, rises to just over four metres and spans more than three metres across, facing east. Set into it is an arched recess nearly two metres high, corbelled, meaning its rear is roofed with overlapping stones rather than a true arch. A projecting ledge above the recess would once have supported a lean-to shelter, probably for the workers tending the fire. Behind the front wall, a beaker-shaped funnel, stone-lined and roughly one and a third metres across at the top, would have held the alternating layers of fuel and limestone that a working kiln required. Notably, the whole thing was constructed using a local material the landowner refers to as firestone, a stone chosen presumably for its ability to withstand the sustained heat of a lime burn. According to that same landowner, the kiln was built in approximately two weeks in 1934 and put to use just three times before falling idle.

What makes the Glencollins kiln quietly strange is the gap between the evident effort of its construction and the slenderness of its use. The corbelled rear, the ledge for the lean-to, the careful choice of heat-resistant stone: these are details that suggest someone building to last, or at least building to work regularly. Three burns, by any measure, is a thin return on two weeks of masonry.