Court tombs are among the oldest megalithic monuments in Ireland, typically consisting of a roofed stone gallery used for burial, approached by an open semicircular or oval forecourt formed from upright stones. The forecourt is thought to have served a ceremonial function, a space for ritual activity connected to the interment of the dead, and the whole structure would originally have been covered by a long cairn of stones and earth.

The tomb at Tawnywaddyduff was recorded by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin as part of their systematic survey of megalithic tombs across Ireland, with the County Mayo volume published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964. That project was a landmark effort to document the full range of megalithic burial monuments across the country, and Mayo proved to be particularly rich territory. The county contains a remarkable concentration of court tombs, reflecting dense Neolithic settlement in the west of Ireland at a time when this landscape would have looked very different, cleared and farmed by communities who built in stone on a scale intended to endure. De Valera and Ó Nualláin's fieldwork gave many of these sites their first detailed modern description, and for numerous tombs in remote townlands, their volume remains the primary published source.