Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape; they typically represent the remains of a ringfort or rath, a type of enclosed farmstead used from the early medieval period onwards, defined by a raised earthen bank and sometimes a surrounding ditch. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is the uncertainty that has attached itself to its current condition.

The enclosure was recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1931, but by the time it entered the archaeological literature it was described as levelled, with a modern building said to occupy the site. A later correction to that description, however, indicates that no building actually overlies it. Instead, the enclosure may have been partially cut away on its eastern side by a driveway running north towards a house. It is a small but telling discrepancy, the kind that accumulates around sites that have been quietly altered rather than dramatically destroyed, where a farm track or a new gable wall does incremental damage that is harder to document than outright demolition. The site was included in a 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, compiled by D. Lavelle for the Lough Mask and Lough Carra Tourist Development Association, which catalogued the archaeology of an area whose better-known features cluster around those two lakes.