Gibbets were the iron cages or wooden frames on which the bodies of executed criminals, or sometimes the severed heads of rebels, were displayed after death. The practice was intended as a public deterrent, and gibbet sites were typically chosen for visibility, often at crossroads, on high ground, or near the boundaries of a jurisdiction. That a specific location in Newrath retains this name in the archaeological record suggests the site held some significance in the administration of punishment during the period when such displays were legally sanctioned in Ireland.

The use of gibbeting in Ireland was most closely associated with the period of English colonial administration, particularly from the sixteenth through to the early nineteenth century, when public execution and the display of remains were tools of both criminal justice and political intimidation. The precise history of the Newrath site, including who may have been gibbeted there and under whose authority, is not currently documented in available sources. What survives is essentially the place itself and its name, which is sometimes all that remains of these grim episodes in a locality's past.