Groves of this kind, named and mapped and classified as archaeological monuments, often mark spots where something once stood or happened, a house, a boundary, a gathering place, and the fact that this one retains a personal name points toward a family or individual who shaped the landscape here, even if the details of that connection have not yet surfaced in accessible records.

Derryhiveny itself is a townland with at least one well-documented historical layer. It is home to Derryhiveny Castle, a tower house built in 1643 by Donal O'Madden, one of the last examples of Gaelic tower house construction in Ireland before the old order was finally dismantled in the aftermath of the Cromwellian wars. That context places the wider landscape within a period of intense social and political upheaval, when landholding, naming, and the marking of territory all carried considerable stakes. Whether Harding Grove belongs to that same era, or to an earlier or later moment, remains unclear without fuller investigation into the site's own record.