What remains is an oval rath, a type of earthwork enclosure associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. A rath consists of one or more raised banks with a ditch, known as a fosse, dug between them to reinforce the boundary. Here at Cloonigny, two such banks and their intervening fosse can still be traced, though the monument measures only around 45 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south, placing it among the smaller examples of its kind.

The enclosure has not worn away through neglect alone. Quarrying has eaten into it from the north-east, through the east, and around to the south-east, removing much of the original earthwork on that side. What the quarrying left behind is an irregularly shaped scarped mound, the upcast material displaced during extraction, which now sits awkwardly against the surviving remains and complicates any reading of the original form. A field boundary, probably of more recent origin, cuts across the monument at both the north-east and south-east, further fragmenting what the quarrying spared. Together, these two interventions mean that the rath survives in a substantially altered state, its enclosing elements interrupted and partially replaced by the incidental shapes of later land use.