What lies here is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built across Ireland roughly between the sixth and tenth centuries. The enclosure at Cloonavery is circular, measuring about 27 metres across, and sits on a gentle north-east-facing slope. Its defining earthen bank has worn down considerably over time, standing only between 0.2 and 0.6 metres high on the interior and a little more on the outer face. A fosse, the shallow ditch that typically runs outside the bank as both a drainage feature and a boundary marker, survives in two forms: a band of rushes tracing its course to the north and east, and that expanded pond to the south and south-west, where water has gathered in the old cut.

The site has been altered in at least one significant way. A field bank that once ran north-east to south-west has been removed, and its former scarp clips the north-western edge of the ringfort perimeter, truncating the circuit. There is no visible entrance surviving, which may reflect the same history of gradual agricultural reshaping. Notably, a related earthwork and ring-ditch lie roughly 60 metres to the south-south-east, suggesting this was once part of a small cluster of features rather than an isolated enclosure. Archaeological testing carried out around 50 metres to the east, however, produced no material that could be connected to the ringfort, leaving the relationship between these nearby features unresolved.