Not a natural grove, but a deliberate one, enclosed and roughly circular, about 38 metres across, positioned to look out over the lower ground to the north and north-east. It appears on the 1922 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a clear, intentional feature. Today, nothing of it remains above ground.

The copse was almost certainly an ornamental element of the designed landscape surrounding Coole House, the County Galway estate long associated with Lady Augusta Gregory, the playwright and folklorist who co-founded the Abbey Theatre and made the house a gathering place for much of the Irish literary revival. Designed landscapes of this kind were common on Georgian and Victorian estates across Ireland, where landowners shaped the grounds around their houses with carefully placed plantations, viewing points, and enclosed coverts, as much for visual effect as for practical use. A circular tree copse on a ridge would have served as a focal point when seen from the house or its approaches, and as a sheltered prospect when seen from within. That this one has left no surface trace at all makes it an especially quiet kind of absence.