When a field inspection finally took place in 1998, what had been formally catalogued as an archaeological enclosure turned out to be something rather more prosaic: a subrectangular structure roughly 37 metres across, built in apparently modern drystone construction, with gaps in its walls and two animal pens fitted into its interior corners, one to the north-west and one to the north-east.

The site had been listed as an enclosure in the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and again in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996. In Irish archaeological classification, the word enclosure covers a broad range of features, from prehistoric ring-forts and early medieval farmsteads to much later field boundaries, and it is not unusual for a feature to be recorded from map evidence or aerial survey before a ground visit is possible. In this case, the inspection clarified that the walls were modern rather than ancient, and that the structure served a straightforward agricultural purpose, keeping livestock within a defined area of rough Clare terrain. The two internal pens suggest a working arrangement familiar from small-scale pastoral farming, where different animals or groups might be separated within the same yard.