It is easy to overlook, and that is precisely the problem. The enclosure measures roughly twenty metres on its longest axis, defined by a bank, a type of raised earthen boundary common to early medieval Irish settlement and farming, that has been so thoroughly levelled over time that it rises barely sixty centimetres above the exterior ground surface. What survives is a wide, flattened ring of earth rather than anything dramatic, the kind of thing that registers as a vague hump in a field rather than a monument.

The enclosure sits in a landscape that clearly once supported several such features. A second enclosure is visible roughly 150 metres to the west-northwest, suggesting this part of Tipperary carried a modest density of early settlement activity. The two monuments in proximity to one another is a pattern seen elsewhere in the Irish midlands and south, where enclosed farmsteads clustered within sight of one another across grazing land. The condition of the Cloghleigh enclosure, however, tells a more recent story of neglect and pressure. A large hole had been dug along the field boundary to the southwest and subsequently backfilled with farm refuse, while earthen spoil had been dumped against both the western and eastern sides of the monument. The bank to the northwest and northeast is further hidden beneath dense vegetation, making it difficult to trace the full outline from ground level.