The enclosure at Cloneygowny sits on a south-facing slope and presents the basic anatomy of a rath, the common Irish ringfort form in which a raised earthen bank enclosed a farmstead, typically dating from the early medieval period. But something does not quite add up. There is no clear fosse, the external ditch that normally accompanies such a bank, and no identifiable entrance feature. The site was entirely absent from the first Ordnance Survey mapping of 1840, appearing only on the revised edition of 1901 to 1905 as a modest circular enclosure. That late cartographic debut, combined with the structural oddities, leaves open the possibility that this is not an ancient settlement at all, but a tree-ring, a deliberately planted circular grove.

The earthen bank measures roughly 28 metres in diameter, with a width of about 3.5 metres. Internally it stands around 1.2 metres high; externally, 1.4 metres. On the southern, downslope side, that bank has been reduced to little more than a scarp, most likely the result of tree collapse over time. Conifers still occupy the interior, and beneath them there is evidence of ridge and furrow cultivation, sometimes called lazy beds, the system of raised planting drills associated with potato growing and common across Ireland from the post-medieval period onward. That agricultural trace suggests the enclosed ground was worked at some point, though whether before or after the enclosure was formed is unclear. The two identities, ancient ringfort and more recent tree-ring, are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible that an existing rath was simply pressed into service as a planting enclosure, its ancient bank repurposed as a windbreak or boundary, the interior given over to conifers rather than left as open ground.