A rath, the circular or near-circular enclosure type that was once the standard form of an early medieval farmstead in Ireland, typically enclosed a family's dwelling within a raised bank and a surrounding ditch. This one at Lisheenacarna, measuring roughly 67 metres on its northeast-southwest axis and 63 metres across the other way, sits at the more substantial end of that tradition. Below it, a turlough, one of those seasonal limestone lakes peculiar to the west of Ireland that fill in winter and vanish in summer, occupies the lower ground, with the Clare River visible further to the north.

The enclosure is still in fair condition overall, its bank and external fosse, the defensive ditch that runs around the outside of the bank, largely intact, though a field wall cuts across both at the north and south. Some sections of the fosse have been quarried away at points, the kind of pragmatic stone-robbing and land-clearance that has reduced similar monuments across Connacht over the centuries. A gap about 2.6 metres wide on the eastern side may be original, possibly the entrance through which people and livestock once passed. Within the western part of the interior, there is a caiseal, bawn, or related structure recorded separately in the survey record, suggesting the enclosed space was not simply an empty yard but had internal features of its own. The position of the site, on raised ground between Knockmaa Hill to the west and Knockacarrigeen Hill to the southeast, places it in a landscape that carries considerable archaeological density, with Knockmaa in particular long associated in local tradition with supernatural and mythological significance.