It is a lime kiln, the kind of industrial remnant that once defined the agricultural landscape of rural Ireland and now tends to be walked past without a second glance. Lime kilns were used to burn limestone at high temperatures, producing quicklime that farmers spread on fields to reduce soil acidity. Most date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when improving landlords and tenant farmers alike depended on them, and this example in North Cork fits squarely into that working tradition.

The kiln dates to the mid or late nineteenth century and was built, characteristically, into the hillside so that the slope could serve as a loading ramp, allowing workers to tip limestone and fuel down into the funnel from above. That funnel is now infilled, but the front elevation survives to around four metres in height and six metres in width, with the arched recess at its base standing roughly one and a half metres high. This recess, known as the draw hole, was where the burnt lime was raked out once firing was complete. Two ledges are visible above it, at roughly two and three metres off the ground respectively, likely relating to the working structure of the kiln face. The random-rubble walls still retain their earthen core, a construction method that helped insulate the burning chamber. A quarry was already marked at this location on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, which suggests the site had been worked for some years before the kiln itself was constructed in its present form.