Enclosures of this kind, typically defined by an earthen bank or stone wall forming a roughly circular boundary, were a common feature of the Irish landscape from the prehistoric period through to the early medieval centuries, serving variously as farmsteads, places of assembly, or enclosed settlements. What makes this particular example quietly melancholy is not what it was, but what it became.

The enclosure at Ballycorey was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1842 and 1921, where it appeared as a substantial feature approximately eighty metres in diameter, sitting near the townland boundary with Dulick to the south-west. The fact that it survived long enough to appear on two successive editions of the OS map, separated by nearly eighty years, suggests it remained a visible presence in the landscape well into the twentieth century. By the time the Girroga Heights estate was developed, however, the feature had been built over entirely, leaving no visible trace above ground.