Kiln - lime, Knockacappul, Co. Kerry

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Knockacappul, Co. Kerry

Along a minor road in Knockacappul, County Kerry, a lime kiln sits in quiet disintegration on the north verge, its front wall partially collapsed and its rear swallowed by vegetation.

Lime kilns were once a familiar feature of the rural Irish landscape, used to burn limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime, which farmers then spread on acidic soil to improve fertility. This one survives in fragmentary but recognisable form, and the fact that it was recorded at all speaks to how thoroughly these workaday structures have slipped from notice.

The kiln is built in random rubble, a construction style using unshaped or loosely shaped stones set without regular coursing, and the front wall, facing south-west, stretches to around five metres in width while retaining an earthen core behind it. At its centre sits the characteristic arched recess, roughly U-shaped in plan and measuring about 1.6 metres wide by 1.7 metres deep. This hollow is where the charge of limestone and fuel would have been loaded for burning. A stone-revetted wall runs along the roadside, and a field fence meets the western end of the front wall, suggesting the kiln was integrated into the working boundaries of a farm. Dump material obscures much of the front face, and the rear and sides have been overtaken by growth, leaving only that south-western elevation as the legible remnant of what the structure once was.

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Pete F
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