The earthwork at Cloghleigh is divided into two distinct parts by a gap roughly eight and a half metres wide, an opening that reads less like a break in the landform and more like a deliberate threshold. That gap is thought to be an entrance feature, and what it was an entrance to helps place the whole arrangement: immediately to the west sits a motte, the type of raised earthen mound used by Norman lords as a fortification base, typically topped with a timber tower. The earthwork at Cloghleigh appears to have been part of the same complex, possibly a forwarding approach or outer enclosure guiding movement towards the motte itself.

The site was identified during a field inspection in November 2006, and the survey found that the monument makes deliberate use of the naturally uneven ground, tilting downslope to the west-southwest rather than sitting flat. The eastern platform is the larger of the two, running approximately eighteen metres on its longer axis, with a steep scarp on its north-western side rising to around two and a third metres. The western platform is smaller and more nearly square in proportion, also defined by a pronounced scarp to the north-west. Both portions are raised, both are shaped by scarps of varying steepness, and the dense growth of bushes along the north-east edge of the eastern section means some of the earthwork's full extent remains obscured. From the site, Athassel Abbey is visible roughly two hundred metres to the north-east across the river. Athassel was one of the largest Augustinian priories in medieval Ireland, and the fact that a probable Norman fortification and this associated earthwork sit within clear sightline of it points to how thoroughly this stretch of the Suir valley was shaped by the same period of settlement and patronage.