Enclosures of this type are among the most common yet least understood monuments in Ireland. They may be the remains of an early medieval ringfort, a secular farmstead enclosed by a bank and ditch for both defence and livestock management, or they may have an ecclesiastical origin, surrounding a church, burial ground, or hermitage. Without excavation or detailed survey, the two are often difficult to tell apart, which is part of what makes them so persistently interesting.

The townland name Cross itself is suggestive. In Irish placename tradition, cross or cros frequently indicates a crossroads, a market, or a site associated with a stone cross or early Christian activity, which leaves open the possibility that this enclosure belongs to a religious rather than a domestic context. Mayo has a dense concentration of early medieval ecclesiastical sites, a legacy of the intensive monastic activity that spread across the west of Ireland from the sixth century onwards, and small enclosed sites associated with local saints or minor monasteries are scattered throughout the county, many of them only partially investigated.