There are no ditches, no walls, no obvious earthwork enclosure; only a slight scarp on the downhill side hints that something purposeful shaped this ground. The copse is classified as a tree ring, a form of designed landscape feature in which trees were planted in a circular arrangement, typically as an ornamental flourish within the managed grounds of a country estate.

Tree rings of this kind were a fashionable element of demesne design during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when landowners across Ireland engaged with the broader European enthusiasm for landscaped parkland. Rather than the formal geometry of earlier garden traditions, these designed grounds favoured naturalistic effects: clumps of trees placed on rises or slopes to create visual interest across open pasture, screen working farmland, or simply signal the taste and means of the estate's owner. A circular copse on a visible slope would have served exactly that kind of purpose, catching the eye from a house or avenue while appearing, to a casual observer, almost like a natural feature. The Ballycurry example retains its circular form despite the passage of time, which suggests the planting was dense and self-sustaining enough to survive without active management.