These enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of one or more banks and ditches thrown up around a central living area. They were not primarily military structures, despite the word "fort"; they were homesteads, built to keep livestock in and wolves or rival neighbours out. Tens of thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, and Binvoran has one of them.

Beyond its classification as a rath and its location in Clare, the particular history of this site remains largely undocumented in publicly available sources. Clare itself is rich in such monuments, many of them associated with the Gaelic kingdoms that held the region through the early and high medieval periods, before the disruptions of the Norman incursions and later plantation. A rath like this one would typically date to somewhere between the sixth and twelfth centuries, though without excavation or detailed survey records it is impossible to say more about this specific enclosure, who built it, or what traces of occupation might survive beneath the soil.