A limekiln, the kind of field kiln once used to burn limestone into agricultural lime for improving pasture, has been built directly into the northern bank, as if the ancient boundary were simply a convenient mound of earth to be pressed into service. That practical overlap, Early Medieval enclosure meeting post-medieval land improvement, gives the site an unusually layered character.

The ringfort itself is a rath, an earthen-banked enclosure of the type built across Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, most commonly as a defended farmstead. At Coolaclevane the roughly circular enclosure measures 46 metres north to south, with an earthen bank still standing to an internal height of 1.2 metres along much of its circuit. A narrow entrance, just 2 metres wide, opens to the northeast, and lines of well-embedded stones survive at the base of the bank on either side of it. Outside the bank, a fosse, the defensive ditch that typically accompanied such enclosures, reaches a depth of 1.7 metres in places to the east and southeast, though it is heavily overgrown with bushes. Inside, the ground slopes down toward the northwest and is now planted with mature coniferous trees. Three flat stones, each around a metre in length and laid end to end, sit in the southern half of the interior, about 6 metres in from the bank; their purpose is not recorded. A 1904 Ordnance Survey map shows a possible outer bank to the east and south, apparently incorporated into the field fence system by then, but the surrounding fences have since been removed and no trace of that outer feature remains visible on the ground.