Roads of this kind are among the less glamorous entries in Ireland's archaeological record, yet they carry a particular interest: unlike a tower house or a carved stone, a trackway is evidence not of where people lived or were buried, but of where they were going, and how they moved through a landscape that may have looked quite different from today's.

The placename Frenchfort itself suggests a history worth pausing over. The "French" element in Irish townland names of this type typically refers to a Norman-French settler family, common in Connacht following the Anglo-Norman expansion of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while "fort" often corresponds to an earthwork enclosure such as a ringfort or a raised rath. A trackway recorded in such a townland may have served a medieval settlement, connected farmsteads to common land, or followed a route with origins considerably older than the Norman presence in the area. Ancient roads in Ireland range from the great pre-Christian routeways to the modest farm tracks worn into the ground over generations of seasonal use.