Enclosures of this kind are among the most common, and most quietly ambiguous, features of the Irish countryside. The term covers a broad range of structures, from early medieval ringforts, which were defended farmsteads typically bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, to ecclesiastical enclosures marking the boundaries of early Christian sites. Without more detailed survey information, Ballindine's example holds its particular history close.

Mayo is thickly scattered with such features, many of them the remnants of settlement patterns laid down between the early centuries of the first millennium and the coming of the Normans in the twelfth century. An enclosure in this part of Connacht might equally represent a farming family's homestead from the Early Christian period or the boundary of a long-vanished monastic precinct. The surrounding landscape, heavily farmed and reshaped over centuries of agricultural use, often swallows these earthworks until only a slight rise in a field or a curve in a hedgerow marks what was once a deliberate boundary.