Court tombs are among the earliest megalithic monuments in Ireland, characterised by an open, semi-circular or oval forecourt formed by standing stones, leading into one or more roofed gallery chambers where the dead were placed. They are found mostly across the northern half of the island, and Mayo has a reasonable share of them, though many sit in farmland or rough pasture with little to mark their presence beyond the stones themselves.

Beyond the classification and the townland name, the documentary record for this particular structure is thin. Court tombs as a type were built by farming communities in the fourth millennium BC, often on elevated or conspicuous ground, and they are generally understood to have served both as places of communal burial and as territorial markers for the groups who constructed them. The bones of multiple individuals, sometimes mixed and sometimes accompanied by Neolithic pottery, have been recovered from comparable monuments elsewhere in the country. Whether this example at Formoyle retains any visible structural integrity, how many chambers it may once have had, or what condition the forecourt stones are in, is not currently documented in any accessible published source.