What makes it interesting is what it may represent: the ghostly outline of an Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of circular or oval boundary that once defined a sacred precinct in early medieval Ireland. These enclosures, typically formed by a raised bank or earthen wall, marked off monastic or church land from the surrounding countryside, and hundreds of them once existed across the island. Most have been ploughed flat, built over, or absorbed into later settlements. When a curve of earthwork survives at all, even partially, it tends to be the last trace of something that was once the spiritual and social centre of a local community.

The possible enclosure at Tuitestown was identified in research by Leo Swan, published in 1988, who noted the relationship between the curving earthworks and the nearby church and graveyard. Swan was a leading figure in the systematic study of Early Christian enclosures in Ireland, and his 1988 work drew attention to numerous sites where landscape features, when read alongside ecclesiastical remains, pointed to the presence of these early foundations. The church at Tuitestown already had a known graveyard associated with it, which is itself suggestive of long continuity of use at the site. The earthworks to the east would, if the interpretation holds, represent the perimeter of a much older enclosed settlement, predating the standing church by many centuries.