Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are roughly circular enclosures defined by an earthen bank and ditch, and they were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically associated with farming families of some modest standing. This particular example at Clonkill has been largely levelled, and its existence is most legible not to the eye in the field but through aerial photography; a Digital Globe image taken in November 2011 revealed its outline clearly enough to confirm what had otherwise become almost invisible ground.

When the site was described in 1981, it still retained more of its physical character. The enclosure was sub-circular, measuring approximately 25 metres across on its northwest to southeast axis, and was defined by a low earthen bank accompanied by a wide fosse, the ditch that typically ran outside the bank and contributed the upcast material used to build it up. The bank survived best on the western side, reaching a maximum height of 1.25 metres there, while elsewhere it had become fragmentary. Within the enclosure, in the eastern quadrant, a possible house site was also recorded, a detail that gives the monument a more intimate quality, suggesting the faint trace of a domestic interior within what is otherwise just an eroding ring. A field fence running northwest to southeast cuts across the perimeter at the southwest, the kind of agricultural imposition that has gradually worn away countless such monuments across the Irish midlands. A second ringfort lies just 35 metres to the northeast, a pairing that was not unusual; multiple enclosures in close proximity sometimes indicate a farmstead that expanded over time, or closely related households occupying the same ridge.