The site is roughly sixty metres across, and what makes it worth pausing over is its double-bank construction: an inner bank still standing about two metres high, an outer bank at around one metre, and a fosse, or ditch, running between the two. That layered arrangement of bank, ditch, and bank is relatively uncommon among Irish ringforts, the roughly circular enclosed farmsteads that were built in their thousands during the early medieval period, broadly from around the fifth to the twelfth century. Most examples have a single bank and fosse; a double-banked enclosure of this kind would generally suggest a site of some local importance, perhaps the homestead of a family with a degree of status within their territory.

The entrance, opening to the south-east, was noted by P. J. Hartnett in 1939. That south-easterly orientation is actually quite typical of ringforts across Ireland, and various explanations have been offered over the years, from the practical, catching morning light and prevailing dry winds, to the possibly symbolic. Inside the enclosure there is also a possible souterrain, an underground passage or chamber of the kind often built beneath early medieval settlements for storage or as a place of refuge. Whether the Clashanure example is a genuine souterrain or simply a natural subsidence has not been confirmed, but its presence adds another layer of interest to a site that is already more complex than it first appears from the field boundary.