Whether it is a man-made earthwork or simply a natural hillock is a question that has not been definitively settled, and that ambiguity is, in a way, the whole story.

The feature appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps as a hachured enclosure, the cartographic shorthand for a raised or embanked earthwork. That marking has traditionally suggested something deliberate, possibly a rath or a barrow. A rath is a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead built by early medieval Irish families, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. A barrow is a burial mound, often prehistoric. Either interpretation would make this a site of some significance. But in 1952, a researcher named McCaffrey took a sceptical view, suggesting the feature might simply be a natural hillock left proud of the surrounding bogland, the kind of slight elevation that can fool the eye and, apparently, the cartographer. The subcircular shape and the faint scarp have not resolved the debate either way.