That designation alone sets it apart from the countless other walls, ditches, and earthen banks that divide the Irish countryside, most of which pass unrecorded. Something about this particular boundary, whether its age, its construction method, or its relationship to the landscape around it, warranted inclusion in the national record of protected monuments.

Field boundaries in Ireland range enormously in date and character. Some are Bronze Age land divisions, fossilised beneath later turf; others are the product of post-medieval enclosure, thrown up in stone by tenant farmers or landlord schemes. Without further detail specific to Ballygarran, it is not possible to say which tradition this example belongs to, or what physical form it takes on the ground. What can be said is that Kerry has a long history of settled farming, and that boundaries in this part of Munster sometimes preserve alignments or construction techniques that predate the modern townland system by centuries. The townland name Ballygarran likely derives from the Irish "Baile an Gharráin", meaning the settlement of the grove or thicket, which gives a loose sense of the wooded or sheltered character the place may once have had.