A lime kiln is, at its simplest, a furnace built to burn limestone at high temperatures, reducing it to quicklime, which farmers then spread across acidic soils to improve their fertility. The process was labour-intensive and fuel-hungry, and the kilns that remain are often the most durable trace of an agricultural economy that has otherwise left little behind.

By the eighteenth century, lime burning had become widespread across Ireland as improving landlords and tenant farmers alike recognised its value in working difficult land. Kerry's landscape, with its pockets of limestone and abundant need for soil amendment, made it well suited to the practice. Kilns of this type were typically built into a hillside or bank, allowing the draft needed to sustain the burn and making it easier to load raw limestone from above while drawing off the finished lime from a lower draw arch. The Inchinanagh example fits into this broader pattern of post-medieval agricultural infrastructure, modest in ambition but essential to the farming life of the period.