The site itself is gone, consumed by quarrying at some point after the Ordnance Survey captured it in 1842. What that enclosure actually was, who built it, or how old it was, nobody can now say with certainty.

Circular earthwork enclosures of this kind, often called ringforts or raths, are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, typically associated with early medieval settlement and farming. They functioned as enclosed farmsteads, the surrounding bank and ditch offering a degree of protection for people and livestock. At twenty-one metres in diameter, Gurteeniher's enclosure would have been on the modest end of the scale. The OS six-inch maps of the 1840s, produced during the primary triangulation of Ireland, recorded thousands of such features, many of which, like this one, were already being lost to agricultural improvement, construction, and quarrying by the time the surveyors arrived. The hachure marks on the map, short lines radiating inward to indicate a raised bank or slope, are now all that confirms the enclosure was ever there.