The enclosure at Rathcorbally is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. These were not primarily defensive structures in the military sense but rather farmsteads, where a family and their livestock lived within a bank and sometimes a ditch, the raised perimeter marking both a practical boundary and a statement of social standing.

What survives here is an approximately circular area enclosed by a bank of earth and stone, measuring around 28 metres across on its northeast to southwest axis and 23 metres northwest to southeast. The interior rises gently towards the centre, and running east to west across it are traces of cultivation ridges, the faint parallel corrugations left by repeated ploughing or spade tillage. These ridges hint at a later agricultural use of the interior, long after whoever first built and lived within the enclosure had gone. The monument sits on an undulating ridge, positioned to overlook the wetter, lower ground to the south, a placement that would have made practical sense for drainage, visibility, and the grazing of livestock on the damp pasture below. The outline of the whole structure remains clear enough to be visible on aerial photography.