A cashel is a type of ringfort enclosed by a stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and in a county as geologically limestone-rich as Clare, the material was always close at hand. Ireland contains thousands of ringforts, the majority of them dating to the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, when they served as enclosed farmsteads for individual family units. Most were built from whatever the local ground offered most readily, and in the Burren region and its fringes, that meant stone.

Bealnalicka itself is a small rural townland in east Clare, and the presence of a cashel there fits a pattern that repeats across the west of Ireland: a family or kin group selected a slight rise or a defensible patch of ground, raised a circular wall of dry-stone construction around their dwelling and outbuildings, and worked the surrounding land for generations. The word cashel derives from the Old Irish caiseal, itself borrowed from the Latin castellum, meaning a fortified enclosure. Beyond its classification and location, the specific history of this particular structure remains undocumented in any publicly available form at present.