That is very nearly all that can be said with confidence. It has been recorded, assigned a monument number, and placed on official maps, yet the details that would give it shape and meaning, its age, its form, its purpose, remain locked away from casual inquiry. In a county full of ringforts, cashels, and field enclosures that range from the early medieval to the post-medieval, Rathluby's example sits quietly in the record as little more than a name and a location.

Enclosures of this kind in Clare are often the remains of ringforts, the circular or roughly circular enclosed settlements that were the dominant form of rural habitation in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the sixth to the twelfth century. Some are defined by earthen banks and ditches, others by stone walls, and a small number preserve traces of the structures that once stood inside. Without further documentation it is impossible to say which category Rathluby's enclosure falls into, or whether it belongs to an entirely different tradition altogether. The townland name itself, beginning with "Rath", is the Irish word for a ringfort, which may or may not be a clue pointing back to this very feature.