Scattered across its surface are several small islands, and among them sits Carrigeenagat, a name that translates roughly from the Irish as "little rock of the cat", a designation that raises questions more readily than it answers them. Whether the cat in question is a wildcat, a heraldic reference, or simply a local nickname lost to time is not clear, but the name itself belongs to a landscape where place names tend to carry long memories.

Lough Carra sits within a karst limestone landscape in the barony of Clanmorris, and the lake and its islands have drawn human activity for thousands of years. The wider area contains crannogs, those artificial or partly artificial island dwellings built during the early medieval period and sometimes earlier, as well as the remains of later occupation. The lake itself became notable in literary history through its association with the writer George Moore, who lived nearby at Moore Hall and who wrote about Carra's unusual quality of light. The island's recorded monument status suggests it holds some archaeological significance, though the precise nature of what survives there, whether structural remains, earthworks, or other features, is not documented in publicly available detail at present.