It is, in fact, a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was built in enormous numbers across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. What makes this one quietly interesting is precisely how little of it remains visible: the enclosing earthen bank, between eight and a half and ten metres wide, rises only twenty to fifty centimetres above the interior ground level, and no more than the same on its outer face. There is no surviving fosse, the defensive ditch that typically accompanies such banks, and no identifiable entrance gap survives in the circuit.

The site measures approximately twenty-six metres across on its north-north-east to south-south-west axis and twenty-four metres east to west, placing it at the smaller end of the ringfort scale. The bank is clearest on the south-eastern arc, where it can still be traced as a coherent feature; elsewhere it dissolves gradually into the level ground. When it was recorded for the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and again for the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, the site was catalogued under the cautious designation of "Enclosure" rather than ringfort outright, a reflection of how worn the evidence had become. The townland name Cloghaunnatinny, like many Clare placenames, carries old Irish roots, and the ridge setting, even at its northern margin, would have offered a degree of natural elevation and drainage suited to early settlement.