These enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as the farmsteads of farming families between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. A raised bank of earth, sometimes accompanied by a fosse or outer ditch, defined the domestic space within, offering a degree of protection for people, livestock, and property. Tens of thousands once existed across the island; a significant number survive, quietly absorbed into field systems and farmland.

Baunmore itself is a townland name that likely derives from the Irish meaning large field or great plain, a reflection of the open, limestone-heavy terrain that characterises much of Clare. The county contains a considerable concentration of surviving ringforts, owing in part to the thin soils over karst bedrock that made large-scale agricultural clearance less intensive here than in other parts of Ireland. That geological circumstance has preserved many features that elsewhere were levelled by ploughing over the centuries, and the rath at Baunmore is one such survivor in a county that retains a notably dense archaeological footprint.