What survives of this circular rath, a type of enclosed farmstead typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, amounts to only a partial arc: a bank running from the south, around through the west, to the north, and a stretch of external fosse visible at the northwest. The rest has vanished entirely from the surface, leaving just enough to sketch a circle that once had a diameter of around 49 metres.

Raths were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, and tens of thousands once existed across the country. Most were the enclosed homesteads of farming families, the bank and fosse serving as much for livestock management as for defence. The Clonbrock example sits within what was the demesne of the Clonbrock estate, a landed property in east County Galway. Like many ringforts absorbed into post-medieval estates, it would have been gradually worn down by centuries of agricultural activity and landscaping. A short distance to the southeast lies an icehouse associated with the nearby mansion, a structure used to store ice harvested in winter for use in the house through the warmer months, which hints at the scale and ambition of the estate that quietly erased so much of what surrounded it.