The structure's arched recess, standing roughly 1.8 metres high and 2.25 metres wide, still shows the small holes running along the tops of its side walls, placed there to support the timber centring used during construction. Sloping slabs at the rear of the recess and a ledge above the arch opening are the kinds of details that repay a closer look, the fingerprints of a very deliberate piece of vernacular engineering.

Lime kilns were once a routine feature of the Irish agricultural and industrial landscape. Stone, usually limestone, was loaded into the top of the kiln and burned at high temperature; the resulting quicklime was spread on fields to reduce soil acidity or mixed into mortar for building. The fact that this one sits within a quarry is entirely in keeping with the logic of the thing: the raw material and the processing facility were kept as close together as possible. The specific quarry setting at Lackanamona would have made the operation self-contained, with stone extracted nearby and fed directly into the burn. The structure's construction details, particularly the centring holes and the sloping rear slabs that helped direct heat and draw air through the charge, reflect a design refined through long practice across rural Ireland and Britain.