At roughly 4.45 metres tall on its south-facing front elevation, it is not a small structure, and the stone-arched recess cut into that face, about two metres high and just over two metres wide, opens into a chamber nearly three metres deep. The side walls inside were once plastered, and sloping slabs at the rear directed material down towards a stoking hole, where fuel would have been fed into the fire below. The circular funnel at the top, stone-lined and now infilled, is where limestone was loaded in from above.

Lime kilns like this one were a familiar feature of the Irish rural landscape from the seventeenth century onwards, and were often built directly into a hillside or quarry face to make loading easier. The basic principle was simple: limestone and fuel, usually coal or timber, were packed in alternating layers through the top funnel, and fire was fed through the opening at the base. The intense heat drove off carbon dioxide from the limestone, leaving quicklime, which farmers spread on acidic soils to improve their fertility. The plastered interior walls here suggest some care was taken in the kiln's construction, as plaster helped retain heat and protect the stonework from the corrosive effects of the burning process. That the structure survives at all in recognisable form, with its arch intact and its overall geometry still legible, is more than can be said for many of its counterparts, which have collapsed entirely or been robbed for building stone.