Enclosures of this kind are among the most common and most varied features of the Irish countryside. The term covers a wide range of man-made boundaries, from the circular earthen ringforts of the early medieval period, used as defended farmsteads, to later ecclesiastical enclosures that once surrounded early Christian sites. Without more detail, the Bellavary example holds its secrets close.

Mayo is a county with an exceptionally dense archaeological record, shaped by thousands of years of continuous habitation, and enclosures dot its fields in considerable numbers. Some are clearly visible from the road as raised earthen banks or subtle cropmark outlines in dry summers; others have been largely absorbed into field boundaries over centuries of agricultural use. The particular history of this enclosure, its age, its function, and what it may once have enclosed, remains undocumented in any accessible public record at present.