Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when constructed from earthen banks and ditches, were the standard farmstead of early medieval Ireland, built roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands once existed across the island, and several thousand survive in Clare alone, yet each occupies its own particular ground, shaped by the contours of the land and the choices of the family who raised it.

The place name Lisheencrony offers a small clue to what lies there. The element "lisheen" derives from the Irish loisín, a diminutive of lios, itself another word for a ringfort or enclosed settlement. So the townland name essentially carries the memory of the monument within it, a linguistic habit common across Ireland, where the old field boundaries and earthworks left their mark on the map long after their original function was forgotten. Clare's limestone landscape, with its thin soils and exposed rock, has preserved many such earthworks better than wetter or more intensively farmed counties, and a rath here would typically consist of a raised circular area enclosed by one or more banks, possibly with traces of an entrance gap still visible on the ground.