These circular earthen monuments, consisting of a low central mound enclosed by a ditch and an outer bank, are among the older funerary structures found across Ireland, most commonly associated with the Bronze Age. They were burial places, sometimes for a single individual of apparent status, and the ring form was likely as much about marking territory or memory as it was about containing the dead.

Glendree lies in east Clare, a part of the county that tends to attract less attention than the limestone pavements of the Burren to the west, yet the area carries its own quiet accumulation of prehistoric and early historic remains. Ring barrows of this kind were constructed over a long period, with many dating to somewhere between 2000 and 500 BC, though precise dating for any individual example depends on excavation and finds that may never have been recorded for this particular site. The monument at Glendree is listed as a protected structure, which places it within a broader national effort to document and preserve field monuments that might otherwise be lost to agriculture, forestry, or simple neglect.