These enclosures, typically formed by a raised earthen bank or fosse, marked the limits of a monastic or church settlement and often survive as subtle curves in field boundaries long after every associated building has vanished. The name Lismateige itself is suggestive; the element "lios" generally points to an enclosed space, hinting that the memory of a boundary was embedded in local place-name tradition even before any formal survey took notice of it.

Ecclesiastical enclosures of this type belong broadly to the early Christian period in Ireland, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, when the church organised itself around small monastic communities rather than a network of parish churches in the later European manner. The enclosure would have contained a church, probably timber in its earliest phase, along with the cells, gardens, and burial ground of a small religious community. In many cases the patron saint or founding figure of such a site has been entirely forgotten, their name surviving only in a nearby holy well or a garbled townland form. Lismateige has not yet yielded enough documented detail to name its founders or date its active life with any precision, and the physical extent and current condition of the enclosure remain similarly unrecorded in publicly available sources.