The enclosure itself is defined by a mound or slab wall, a construction method common in the Burren region where flat limestone slabs are used in place of mortared stone, and it stretches roughly 120 metres east to west and 83 metres north to south. What makes it stranger still is the presence of a smaller enclosed area, approximately 38 metres by 30 metres, positioned centrally within the larger one, like a room within a room. Both are cut through by a straight field wall running from northeast to south, a later intrusion that pays no attention to whatever purpose the earlier boundaries once served.

The site sits within what is recorded as an extensive multiperiod field system, meaning that generations of people, separated by potentially centuries, left their marks on this hillside in overlapping layers. The enclosure itself is the kind of feature that resists easy interpretation. Large hilltop enclosures in Ireland can belong to the prehistoric period, the early medieval period, or somewhere in between, and without excavation it is rarely possible to say which. The internal enclosure, centrally placed and of a quite different scale, raises further questions. Was it a dwelling area, a place of ritual, a stock enclosure, or some combination of functions across different eras? The later field wall cutting across both boundaries suggests the site had already lost its original meaning by the time that boundary was constructed. The enclosure was noted by Ros Ó Maoldúin during fieldwork in the area.

Ailwee Hill sits in a part of Clare where the landscape holds a great deal just beneath the surface, and often at the surface too. Visitors approaching the western summit should expect uneven, rocky ground typical of the Burren, where exposed limestone pavement and scrub vegetation make for slow going. The outlines of the enclosure walls are likely to be subtle at ground level, and the full scale of the site is easier to appreciate from aerial imagery than from within it.