Court tombs, sometimes called court cairns, are Neolithic in origin, typically consisting of an open semicircular forecourt leading into one or more roofed gallery chambers, the whole originally covered by a long cairn of stone. They are associated with communal burial and date broadly to around 4000 BCE, making them roughly contemporary with the earliest farming settlements in Ireland.

The Killaspugbrone example is recorded in Seán Ó Nualláin's authoritative Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume V, covering County Sligo, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1989. Ó Nualláin's systematic county-by-county survey remains the primary scholarly reference for megalithic monuments across Ireland, and County Sligo is particularly rich in such structures, most famously in the Carrowmore and Carrowkeel complexes. The inclusion of this tomb in that volume places it within a broader tradition of megalithic construction that was clearly active and widespread across the Sligo landscape during the Neolithic period. The townland name itself, Killaspugbrone, derives from the Irish and refers to a church associated with Saint Bronus, a bishop linked in early medieval tradition to Saint Patrick, suggesting this corner of Sligo accumulated layers of significance across several distinct eras.