When construction monitoring began at Monalin in the townland of Newtownmountkennedy in 2019, the ground gave up 133 features of probable archaeological significance, including pits, hearths, post holes, stakeholes, and a series of features strongly interpreted as cereal drying kilns. Cereal drying kilns were a common agricultural technology in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a small stone or clay-lined flue and a drying chamber used to prepare grain for milling or storage, particularly in the damp Irish climate. That such features survived at all, beneath what historical maps consistently showed as undivided pasture fields, is a reminder of how much can persist below ground even when the surface offers no clues.

The kilns, four in total and aligned on a northwest to southeast axis, extend from the northeastern quadrant of a large circular enclosure roughly fifty metres in diameter, recorded as WI013-121. Their alignment and apparent relationship to the enclosure suggest they may all date from the same period of activity, though precise dating awaits fuller analysis. Excavation of one of the kiln features, designated C5, revealed fire-reddened clay and a shallow fill, both consistent with use as a drying structure, though the shallow depth indicates that ploughing over an unknown number of centuries had already truncated much of what was once there. The monitoring work was carried out by Liza Kavanagh and Barry Lacey of Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd in January and again between April and May 2019, following an earlier geophysical survey in 2005 by Margaret Gowan and Co. Ltd that had not detected any features in this particular area, a reminder that geophysics does not always anticipate what mechanical groundworks will later reveal.