The trees were almost certainly planted as a decorative ring, a practice common on Irish estates from the eighteenth century onwards, but the earthwork they follow is considerably more ancient.

The structure is a rath, the Irish term for an earthen ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was built and occupied across Ireland roughly between the early centuries AD and the early medieval period. Tens of thousands once existed across the country, though many have been levelled by agriculture. This one survives as a roughly circular enclosure measuring about 28 metres north to south and 31 metres east to west, bounded by a bank approximately four metres wide. It sits on a north-east-facing slope in rolling pastureland, and while the bank remains largely intact, it has been levelled at its northern and eastern sides. No original entrance feature is now visible. The beech trees rooted along the bank suggest that at some later point, probably during the era of estate landscaping, the old earthwork was pressed into service as a tree-ring, its prehistoric outline reused as a planting guide.