The one at Tooreenglanahee, in County Cork, is no exception. These structures, essentially stone-built furnaces used to burn limestone at high temperatures to produce quicklime, were once indispensable to farming communities. The resulting lime was spread on acidic soils to improve fertility, or used in mortar and whitewash. Where they survive, they typically appear as a squat, bowl-shaped recess cut into a hillside or built up from local stone, the draw arch at the base still visible in the better-preserved examples.

Lime kilns of this type were in widespread use across Ireland from at least the seventeenth century through to the late nineteenth, when industrially produced lime began to displace the local variety. Their distribution follows the needs of agriculture rather than any particular social hierarchy; a landlord's demesne and a smallholder's field might each have had one nearby. The placename Tooreenglanahee suggests a small, possibly sheltered patch of ground, the kind of marginal townland where such vernacular industrial structures quietly accumulated over generations without attracting much documentary attention. Beyond its recorded presence as a monument, the specific history of this particular kiln remains unconfirmed.