A rath, as this type of enclosure is known in Irish, was typically a farmstead of the early medieval period, defined by one or more banks of earth and accompanying ditches that enclosed a family's living space and livestock. They were never military fortifications in any grand sense; they were homes, the most common monument type surviving in the Irish countryside, yet each one carries its own particular silence.

The details specific to this example, its dimensions, the number of banks it once had, whether any internal features such as souterrains or house platforms remain visible, are not currently available in the public record. What can be said is that the townland of Cross lies in a part of Clare that has long been inhabited, and raths in this county range from modest single-banked enclosures to more substantial multivallate examples that suggest the higher social standing of their original occupants. The very survival of a ringfort in any condition is itself notable; many were levelled during agricultural improvement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and those that remain often owe their preservation to a combination of difficult terrain and, in some cases, local reluctance to disturb what folklore frequently described as fairy forts.

Without more detail on the current condition or accessibility of this particular site, little can be said about what a visitor would encounter on the ground. Many raths in rural Clare are on private farmland and visible only from a distance, their circular outline best appreciated from an elevated vantage point or, on a low winter sun, from the slight shadow cast by a surviving bank.