It is the kind of feature that would once have been entirely legible to anyone familiar with the designed landscapes of Irish demesnes, where tree-rings, circular or oval plantings arranged to create a deliberate visual effect within a private estate, were a relatively common ornamental device. By the time an aerial photograph was taken on 19 July 1971, the feature had vanished entirely from the ground, levelled at some point in the intervening decades.

The tree-ring is thought to have been a landscape feature associated with Woodsgift House and its demesne. To the east of it there had been a larger plantation, and when that was cleared, a roughly circular cluster of trees on what may be a natural rise, approximately 40 metres from the original tree-ring site, was left standing. That surviving clump appears to have caused confusion: a visit recorded in 1987 most likely documented this remnant grouping rather than the tree-ring itself, which had long since been erased. It is a small but telling example of how quickly designed landscapes can disappear and how easily one feature gets mistaken for another once the original context is gone.