From a distance it might read as an ordinary clump of trees, the kind that appears on Irish farmland without much explanation. Look more closely, though, and the ring resolves into something more deliberate: a slight earthen bank defines the boundary, and the trees sit within it at regular enough intervals to suggest intention rather than accident. This is a tree-ring, a category of designed landscape feature in which ornamental or boundary plantings were arranged in a circle, sometimes around an existing earthwork, sometimes from scratch.

The feature sits towards the top of a west-facing slope, and its position on the ridge would have given it a degree of visibility from the land below, which is consistent with the idea that such plantings were at least partly ornamental in character. It appears on the 1907 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a small circular enclosure, though it does not feature on earlier editions, which raises questions about when exactly it was laid out and what, if anything, preceded the planting. Local tradition adds a further layer of uncertainty: bones, and what was described as a grave, are said to have been found in the interior at some point. Whether the earthen bank predates the tree-ring and belongs to an earlier period of use, or whether the tradition reflects something more incidental, is not recorded.