A cashel is a type of ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, and they are closely associated with early medieval Ireland, roughly the period between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of ringforts survive across the country in various states of preservation, but each one represents what was almost certainly a single farmstead, the fortified home of a family of some local standing, enclosed against livestock theft and the general uncertainties of early medieval rural life.

The townland name Poulgorm, meaning something close to "blue hole" in Irish, hints at the watery or boggy character of the ground nearby, the kind of marginal, quietly strange terrain where early settlers sometimes chose to build. Clare is particularly rich in cashels, sitting as it does in a region where stone was abundant and earth-digging less practical than in other parts of the country. Beyond its classification as a cashel-type ringfort and its location in this distinctive corner of Clare, the finer details of this particular site remain to be fully documented and made widely available.