"Caher" derives from the Irish "cathair", referring to a stone fort or enclosure, the kind of circular or oval walled structure that dots the Irish landscape, particularly across Munster, and which served variously as a homestead, a place of refuge, or a marker of territory and status during the early medieval period. That the place-name has survived at all suggests the site made a strong enough impression on the people who lived alongside it to work its way permanently into the local geography.

Beyond the name itself, the recorded details for this particular enclosure in County Clare are sparse. What can be said is that enclosures of this type were typically built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, constructed from dry-stone walling or earthen banks, and functioned as the defended farmsteads of the farming and pastoral communities of early Christian Ireland. Clare, sitting at the edge of the Burren's limestone karst and the broader agricultural lowlands to its south and east, contains a notable concentration of such monuments, many of them still partially visible above ground, others reduced to a slight rise or a scatter of stones in a field boundary.