Kiln - lime, Glennakeel, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Glennakeel, Co. Cork

Along a laneway in Glennakeel, in the north of County Cork, a lime kiln survives in remarkably legible condition, its random-rubble front wall still standing to a height of over four metres.

Lime kilns were once a commonplace feature of the Irish rural landscape, used to burn limestone at high temperatures and produce quicklime, which was then spread on fields to reduce soil acidity or mixed into mortar for building. Most have crumbled or been swallowed by vegetation, which makes a well-preserved example like this one quietly arresting.

The structure faces south and measures just over four and a half metres in length across its front face, which retains an earthen core behind the rubble masonry. At its base sits an arched recess, a little over one and a half metres high and wide, where the draw hole would have allowed the burner to rake out the processed lime and tend the fire below. Sloping slabs at the rear of the recess directed material downward, and a ramp of approximately twenty-five metres runs up behind the kiln, the route by which limestone and fuel were loaded into the funnel at the top. That funnel has since been filled in. A second kiln of similar construction stands roughly two hundred metres to the south, distinguished mainly by the presence of an iron bar incorporated into its recess, a small but telling variation that hints at slightly different building hands or a later repair.

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Pete F
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