What survives is a circular rath, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of an earthen bank and surrounding ditch that defined the household territory of a farming family. At Cloonnabricka, that outline is still legible, though only just.

The enclosure measures around 36 metres in diameter. Its earthen and stone bank is best preserved along the northern arc, running from the north-west through to the east, while elsewhere the boundary survives only as a scarp, a slope in the ground where the bank has eroded or been robbed away. The external fosse, the ditch that would originally have encircled the whole structure, now exists only between the north-west and north. A causeway crossing the fosse at the north marks what was almost certainly the original entrance point, the threshold through which the inhabitants would have passed daily. Less easy to account for is a deep pit dug along the line of the fosse between north and north-east, an intrusion whose purpose is unclear but which has further disturbed an already fragile site.