Sitting on an east-facing slope among pasture, a raised circular platform roughly 32 metres across still holds its shape, ringed by a bank of earth and stone that runs between nine and ten metres wide and stands up to 1.7 metres high in places. Outside that bank, a fosse, the ditch that once deepened the sense of enclosure and made casual entry uninviting, sweeps around the southern, western, and northern sides, reaching nearly ten metres wide and dropping to 1.7 metres at its deepest point. These are not modest earthworks.

A rath, as this class of monument is known, was the standard enclosed farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically home to a single family of some local standing. The bank and fosse together served less as serious military fortification and more as a visible statement of status and a practical barrier against livestock straying or being stolen. The Cleenrah example sits comfortably within that tradition, though the dimensions of its defences are on the more substantial end of the scale. A report from 1976 noted that the original entrance to the enclosure faced east, which is a common orientation for ringforts, possibly reflecting a preference for morning light or simply the lie of the land on a slope that naturally opens in that direction.