It belongs to a category of monument found widely across Ireland, typically a roughly circular or oval area defined by an earthen bank or stone wall, sometimes the remains of a defended farmstead, sometimes something older and less easily explained. Without further detail, the enclosure at Doonty holds its silence well.

Enclosures of this kind range in date from the prehistoric period through to the early medieval, and their purposes varied considerably. Some were ringforts, known in Irish as raths or cashels depending on whether they were built from earth or stone, and these were the farmsteads of early Christian Ireland, home to a family and their livestock. Others predate that era entirely. The townland name Doonty may itself offer a faint clue: the element "dún" appears frequently in Irish placenames and generally refers to a fort or fortified place, suggesting that whoever named this land recognised something significant here long before any formal record was made.