Kiln - lime, Maulane, Co. Cork

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Kilns

Kiln – lime, Maulane, Co. Cork

Along a roadside in Maulane, County Cork, a lime kiln sits in a state of quiet collapse, its top gone and its funnel long since filled in, yet its basic form still readable in the landscape.

Lime kilns were once indispensable structures in rural Ireland, used to burn limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime, which farmers then spread on acidic soils to improve fertility. This one is substantial enough to suggest it once served a working agricultural community with some regularity.

The kiln's front face stands around three metres high and stretches roughly 6.4 metres across, giving it a presence that is hard to miss even in its degraded state. A lintelled recess, the arched or beam-topped opening at the base where workers would draw out the burned lime and tend the fire, measures about 1.7 metres high, 2.1 metres wide, and 1.8 metres deep. A buttress reinforces the east wall, and a stone-built ramp runs up to the rear, the route by which limestone and fuel would originally have been loaded into the top of the funnel from above. Vegetation has crept in around the structure, and the collapsed crown gives it a sunken, ruinous quality that makes it easy to pass without a second glance.

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Pete F
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