Measured at roughly 27 metres in diameter and defined by a stone wall, it was catalogued as an archaeological enclosure in both the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, the two successive frameworks used to document and protect Ireland's known heritage sites. The implication, in both cases, was that the structure might be of ancient origin.

When someone actually went to look at it in 1998, the picture shifted. The wall turned out to be of apparently modern construction, and attached to the south-east side was an animal pen, the kind of practical addition that points firmly toward agricultural use rather than early settlement or ritual enclosure. It is a small but telling episode in how heritage recording works in practice. Sites are sometimes listed from map evidence or earlier surveys before fieldwork confirms what they actually are, and the result can be a gap of years, or in this case over half a decade, between the entry on the record and the correction of it. The enclosure at Doonyvardan is not unusual in this regard, but it is a neat example of the process made visible.