Such features were typically created as part of the ornamental grounds attached to a country house or estate, and their presence in the Irish countryside is a quiet reminder that the impulse to arrange nature into something pleasing, even theatrical, reached well beyond the great demesnes of the east coast.

Designed landscape features of this kind were most commonly laid out during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the fashion for landscape gardening spread from England into Ireland. They might take the form of artificial lakes, planted walks, ha-has (the sunken boundary walls that concealed a fence while preserving an uninterrupted view), raised terraces, or ornamental earthworks. Their creators ranged from ambitious landlords following the theories of designers such as Capability Brown to more modest gentry households making small improvements to their immediate surroundings. Without further detail about the Clooncah example it is difficult to say precisely what form this particular feature takes, but its classification suggests it was conceived as part of a planned, considered arrangement of the landscape rather than something that grew organically over time.