The name Rathfolan itself carries a clue: "rath" is the Irish word for a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period and associated with farmstead settlements, though whether the earthwork here is a rath in the strict sense or something older or different in character is not currently established in the public record.

What can be said is that Clare is a county with an unusually dense concentration of earthworks of all kinds, from ring forts to field boundaries to the remnants of forgotten enclosures whose original purpose has long since dissolved into the grass. The townland name Rathfolan suggests a place with a history of human occupation and demarcation, and the presence of a recorded earthwork, even a poorly documented one, points to a feature considered significant enough to be formally noted as a monument. Beyond that, the specifics of this particular site, its dimensions, date, condition, and form, remain to be properly described in any accessible source.