These structures, built roughly five thousand years ago, typically combine a roofed gallery for the deposit of the dead with an open, semicircular forecourt thought to have served some kind of ceremonial function. That combination of practical funerary purpose and deliberate ritual space is what makes court tombs quietly distinctive, even among the varied megalithic monuments that are scattered with unusual density across Sligo and the broader northwest of Ireland.

The details of this particular tomb were recorded by Seán Ó Nualláin in his Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume V, covering County Sligo, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1989. Ó Nualláin's survey remains a foundational work for understanding the distribution and condition of these monuments across the county, and Kilsellagh is one of many sites documented within it. Sligo has an exceptional concentration of megalithic remains, partly because the local geology provided workable stone and partly because the region was evidently well settled during the Neolithic period, as the presence of monuments like the great passage tomb cemetery at Carrowmore attests. Court tombs in particular cluster in the northern half of Ireland, and Sligo sits near the centre of that distribution.