That kind of cartographic staying power is not accidental. Circular enclosures of this type, often referred to as ringforts or raths, were typically used as enclosed farmsteads during the early medieval period in Ireland, their banks and ditches defining a domestic space rather than a defensive one in any strictly military sense. This one measures approximately 38 metres in diameter, which places it within a common range for such monuments, modest in scale but unmistakable in form.

The enclosure appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, which was among the earliest systematic surveys of the Irish landscape, and it was still legible enough to be recorded again on the 1900 revision. By the later map, a small pond had appeared immediately to the south-west, measuring roughly 15 metres by 10 metres, its relationship to the enclosure unclear but worth noting as a feature of the immediate landscape. A farm trackway is also shown skirting the outer edge of the north-west quadrant, suggesting that even as agriculture reshaped the surrounding land, the enclosure itself was worked around rather than through, perhaps because the earthwork was too substantial to remove, or simply because it had become part of the practical geography of the farm.