A cashel is a ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, a construction technique common in the west of Ireland where stone was more plentiful than workable soil. These circular enclosures date predominantly from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and served as farmsteads for a single family or small farming community, the stone wall providing protection for people and livestock alike.

Berneens is a small rural townland in Clare, a county whose limestone geology made cashel-building a practical choice for generations of early medieval farmers. Thousands of such monuments survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, many of them unexcavated and still holding whatever material evidence lies beneath the surface undisturbed. The specific history of this particular cashel, including any record of its dimensions, condition, or excavation, remains difficult to access at present, as the documentation has not yet been made publicly available online.