Kiln - lime, Gortnaskehy, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Gortnaskehy, Co. Cork

Tucked along the south side of a laneway in Gortnaskehy, north County Cork, there is a lime kiln that most people would walk past without a second thought.

To the uninitiated it might read as a low, rubble-built mound, but its proportions and construction tell a more purposeful story. The front elevation stretches to 5.5 metres across and faces east, with a forecourt area that was once open to receive materials and workers. The whole structure is built from random rubble masonry encasing an earthen core, a solid if unremarkable exterior that gives little away about the industrial process once carried out inside.

Lime kilns were working furnaces, used to burn limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime, which farmers then spread across acidic soils to improve fertility. This one follows a form well recognised across rural Ireland: a stone-lined funnel roughly 1.95 metres in diameter sits at the heart of the structure, tapering downward so that the burned material could be raked out from the arched recess below. That recess is lintelled and corbelled, meaning flat stones project progressively inward to form a rough arch capable of bearing the weight above it, while sloping slabs at the rear helped direct material toward the draw hole. The forecourt and recess are now partially infilled, but enough survives to read the original working arrangement clearly.

The kiln sits on the south side of a laneway, so it remains visible from the road, though the partially infilled forecourt means the interior detail requires some attention to pick out. The corbelled recess is the feature worth examining closely, as the stonework there gives the clearest sense of how lime was drawn out once firing was complete.

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