What was once a clearly defined circular enclosure is now little more than a shallow scarp tracing a rough circle in the earth, roughly 25 to 28 metres across. Without knowing what to look for, you might walk straight over it.

This is a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches. Rathcloghrin appears on the 1837 Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map as a neat circular enclosure, clearly annotated by its name, which suggests it was still legible as a feature at that time. Since then, the site has been substantially levelled, and quarrying has eaten away at the perimeter along the western and north-north-western arc, and again at the south-south-east to south-west. A second ringfort lies approximately 220 metres to the south-east, which points to the kind of clustered early settlement pattern that was once common across this part of the Irish midlands. The hillock on which Rathcloghrin sits would have offered genuine practical advantages to whoever occupied it, with open sightlines in every direction across the undulating ground.