A cashel is a ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, a distinction that often reflects the local availability of stone and the particular traditions of a region. Clare, sitting on the limestone-rich Burren fringe, has more than its share of them, and each one represents what was once a defended farmstead, the home of a family of some local standing during the first millennium or so of the common era.

Ringforts of this type were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, perhaps from the fifth century through to the twelfth, and thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation. The cashel form, with its circuit of stacked stone rather than raised earth, could enclose a single household or a small cluster of structures, sometimes with a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber used for storage or refuge, running beneath the interior. Without more detailed records having been made available for this particular site at Soheen, the specifics of its dimensions, its condition, and any features recorded within it remain difficult to state with confidence.