Enclosures of this kind, broadly defined as areas of ground bounded by a bank, ditch, wall, or some combination of these, turn up throughout Ireland in considerable numbers. They may be the remains of a ringfort, a cashel, a burial ground, a field system, or something more difficult to categorise. The ambiguity is part of what makes them interesting; without excavation or detailed survey, the ground rarely gives away its age or purpose.

Primrosegrange as a townland name has a certain quiet poetry to it, though the "grange" element is the more historically loaded of the two words. Granges were typically outlying farms attached to medieval monasteries, where monks or lay brothers worked agricultural land at some remove from the main house. That association does not confirm anything about this particular enclosure, but it does suggest the area has a longer settled history than the landscape might immediately imply. Sligo as a whole contains a remarkable density of prehistoric and early medieval monuments, from the passage tombs clustered around Carrowmore and Knocknarea to the earthworks and field systems that survive beneath later farming activity.