A lime kiln worked by burning limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime, a calcium oxide used to sweeten acidic soils, whitewash walls, and mortar stone buildings. Without them, much of the agricultural improvement that reshaped the Irish countryside from the seventeenth century onwards would simply not have been possible.

Kilns of this type were typically built into a hillside or bank, which allowed carts to tip limestone and fuel directly into the top of the bowl while the fired lime was drawn out from an arch at the base. They were often constructed and used communally, serving a cluster of farms in a given area rather than a single household, and a working kiln would have been a noisy, smoky, intensely hot operation running for days at a stretch. The Glencollins example, recorded as a monument in its own right, represents one small piece of that wider network of rural industry that once kept Cork farmland productive.