The term enclosure covers a broad range of prehistoric and early medieval features, from simple ringforts, which were the farmsteads of early Irish society enclosed by earthen banks and ditches, to more ceremonial or defensive structures whose purposes remain subjects of debate. That this particular example occupies a demesne landscape adds a layer of complexity; demesne land, typically the private parkland attached to a landed estate, was frequently reshaped, drained, and planted over centuries, meaning that whatever earthworks survive here have done so alongside the considerable interventions of post-medieval estate management.

Belvoir Demesne itself points to a planted landscape of the kind that became common across Clare during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Anglo-Irish landowners remodelled their estates in the fashionable naturalistic style. Enclosures of earlier periods sometimes survived such transformations by accident, incorporated into the ornamental grounds as a curiosity or simply left undisturbed in a corner of the park. Without more detailed records currently available for this site, the precise form of the enclosure, whether it is a raised ringfort, a univallate earthwork, or something more ambiguous, remains unclear.