A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earth and timber, a circular enclosure whose walls once defined the working farm and household of an early medieval Irish family. Where earthen ringforts, or raths, were thrown up from the soil of lowland pastures, cashels tend to appear in stonier ground, their dry-stone walls a practical response to the material at hand. Clare, with its karst limestone terrain, is well supplied with both the raw material and the monuments.

Ringforts of all kinds were constructed across Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and they number in the tens of thousands nationally. They were not military fortifications in any serious sense but rather the defended homesteads of farmers and minor lords, the enclosing wall offering protection for livestock against wolves and opportunistic raiders rather than against armies. The cashel form, with its more substantial stonework, could suggest a household of some local standing, though size and construction quality varied considerably. Cappagh More as a place-name derives from the Irish, broadly meaning a large field or tillage plot, a name that speaks to the agricultural character of the land long before any formal record was kept.