Stretching roughly 80 metres along a northeast to southwest axis and about 15 metres across, it is a designed feature of a working estate, built not for ornament but for food.

Ponds of this kind, sometimes called stew ponds, were a practical fixture of larger Irish and British estates from the medieval period onward, allowing landowners to keep live fish, typically carp, tench, or pike, in controlled conditions until they were needed for the table. The example at Tober is built with some care: stone-faced walls hold the water in check, a water intake at the northeastern end brings in a fresh supply, and a series of sluice gates at the southwestern end allows the water level to be managed and the pond to be drained for harvesting. That combination of intake and sluice indicates a system designed to be actively maintained rather than simply left to fill and stagnate. The demesne setting suggests this was associated with a substantial household, though the precise history of who built it or when remains unrecorded in what has survived.