The enclosure at Rathcloheen is roughly 25 metres across, defined by a bank that survives to an external height of about 1.75 metres and a fosse, the defensive ditch that typically runs around such earthworks, with a basal width of 3 metres and a depth of 0.8 metres. Both are only clearly legible at the southern and south-western arc; elsewhere, dense growth has swallowed the outline almost completely. The interior, too, is overgrown to between one and one and a half metres, making the full scale of the site more a matter of measurement than of direct impression.

The name Rathcloheen points to the site's origins. Raths, sometimes called ring-forts, were enclosed farmsteads constructed predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation. They were built in earth or stone to demarcate and defend a family's land and dwelling. The Ordnance Survey six-inch map records the name here, which suggests the feature was recognised in the landscape long before any formal archaeological documentation. A second enclosure lies approximately 20 metres to the south, indicating that this elevated east-facing slope may have supported more than one such structure. The Galtee Mountains are visible to the south from this vantage point, a orientation that would have offered both practical observation and a degree of natural shelter from westerly weather.