Tree-rings of this kind, sometimes called ring plantations, were a deliberate feature of designed landscapes, typically laid out by estate owners from the eighteenth century onwards. They served partly as ornament and partly as shelter, and their regular geometry, only fully legible from above or at a distance, sets them apart from the irregular woodland that tends to grow up around them over time.

The practice of shaping landscapes through formal tree planting became widespread in Ireland during the Georgian period, when landlords with the means and inclination to do so began imposing order on their estates in ways influenced by English and continental fashions in landscape design. A circular grove could mark a high point on the estate, screen a feature deemed unsightly, or simply signal that the land had a proprietor with aesthetic ambitions. In a county like Galway, where the post-Famine decades thinned the ranks of the landed gentry considerably, many such plantings outlasted the houses and households that commissioned them, becoming quiet anomalies in the modern agricultural landscape.