A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earth and timber, a form of enclosed farmstead that was widespread across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Where earthen ringforts, or raths, were thrown up using whatever soil and clay lay to hand, a cashel required the quarrying and stacking of stone, which tells us something about the local geology and the resources available to whoever built it. Clare, with its limestone-rich terrain, produced more than its share of them.

Ringforts of both kinds served primarily as high-status farmsteads, the enclosed residence of a farming family of some standing, with the enclosing wall or bank providing security for livestock as much as for people. Cashels could range from modest single-walled enclosures to elaborate structures with multiple concentric walls, souterrains, which are underground stone-lined passages thought to have served as storage or refuge, and traces of timber or drystone buildings within. The example at Barefield belongs to this broader tradition of early medieval settlement that has left Clare with one of the densest concentrations of such monuments anywhere in the country.