The lime kiln at Gortmore in north Cork is not a ruin in the usual sense; it is more like a piece of industrial machinery that simply stopped being used, left in place with its working geometry largely intact.

Lime kilns were once a commonplace feature of Irish farmland, used to burn limestone or shell at high temperatures to produce quicklime, which was then spread on acidic fields to improve soil fertility or used as a binding agent in mortar. The Gortmore example is built from random-rubble sandstone, with the front wall retaining an earthen core and the sides stone-faced throughout. The front elevation stands 3.5 metres high and stretches 9.2 metres wide, facing north-east. At its centre is a lintelled corbelled recess, a roughly arched opening formed by overlapping stones rather than a true arch, measuring approximately 2.8 metres high, 2.55 metres wide, and nearly 2.75 metres deep. This is the draw hole, where the burned lime would have been raked out once firing was complete. Behind the main face, the heat-shattered sandstone-lined funnel, roughly 1.9 metres in diameter, has been infilled, but the earthen loading ramp that allowed workers to tip raw limestone into the top of the kiln from above still extends some six metres to the south-west. The sandstone itself, cracked and discoloured from repeated exposure to intense heat, carries a faint physical record of the temperatures once generated inside.