The name of the townland itself hints at a countryside that may once have looked quite different, a reminder that the bare, wind-exposed terrain of much of County Mayo was not always so open.

An enclosure of this kind would typically date anywhere from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period, though without more specific detail it is difficult to say more about this particular example. What is certain is that Mayo contains an unusually dense concentration of such monuments, a reflection of long and continuous human settlement across its boglands, drumlins, and coastal margins. The county's archaeology ranges from megalithic field systems at Céide Fields, among the oldest in the world, through to the ringforts and cashels that dot almost every townland, many still visible as earthen banks or stone-faced walls in the corners of modern fields.