Court tombs take their name from the unroofed ceremonial forecourt, usually a curved or oval space defined by upright stones, that opens onto one or more roofed gallery chambers. They are found almost exclusively in the northern half of Ireland, and Sligo has a notable concentration of them, scattered across the drumlin landscape and along the edges of the uplands.

The principal scholarly reference for this tomb is Seán Ó Nualláin's survey, published in 1989 as the fifth volume in a national series documenting megalithic tombs county by county. Ó Nualláin's work brought together field measurements, descriptions of surviving structural elements, and assessments of condition across dozens of Sligo sites, providing the most systematic record available of monuments that are often badly disturbed, robbed for building stone over centuries, or simply difficult to locate on the ground. Court tombs in this region were constructed using whatever local stone was available, generally limestone or sandstone slabs, and their builders were farming communities who had settled the Irish landscape well before the arrival of metal technology.