Sitting at around 250 feet between Abbey Hill to the west and the considerably bulkier Slieve Oughtmama to the south-east, the gap is recorded on a 1997 map as both Corker Pass and the ancient Carcair na gCléirach. That Irish name translates as either the cleric's rock or, more arrestingly, the cleric's place of confinement, a phrase that invites speculation about what happened here and to whom, without offering any clear answer.

The pass has been in use as a natural north-south routeway for centuries, perhaps much longer. Its most datable moment of historical record comes from 1599, when the Annals of the Four Masters note that O'Donnell's forces moved through the area, passing by Corcomroe and then north-east through Carcair na gCléirach. This was a period of intense military movement across Ireland during the Nine Years' War, and the pass would have been a logical corridor for any force moving through this part of Connacht and into the Burren. The 1915 edition of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map records the name as Corker Pass, and the route today forms part of the boundary between the townlands of Abbey East and Oughtmama to the south, before cutting between Abbey East and Rossalia as it crests and begins to descend again. The place sits in a category archaeologists sometimes call a potential site identified by name alone, meaning the toponym carries historical weight even where no physical monument survives to mark it.