That a later field wall was driven straight through it, cutting across both the northern and southern arcs, says something about how thoroughly these older boundaries were forgotten, or simply ignored, as the working landscape reorganised itself around them.

Circular enclosures of this kind are a recurring feature of the Irish countryside, and their purposes varied considerably. Some were ringforts, the fortified farmsteads of early medieval families, enclosed by earthen banks or stone walls to protect livestock and household alike. Others served ritual or ceremonial functions reaching back further still. At Knockroe, the original form is recoverable only in outline: the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, which were produced from the 1830s onward and captured field monuments before many were altered or lost, recorded the enclosure as a clear circular feature. What a visitor would see today is considerably less than that, a single curving bank perhaps seven metres long, lying to the west of the dividing field wall, the rest long since levelled or absorbed into the surrounding ground.