Raths were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically defined by a raised bank and an outer ditch, and this one at Clooncruffer follows that pattern faithfully, even if time and cattle have done their best to blur the details.

The enclosure measures 27 metres across in both directions, making it a fairly modest example of the type. Its earthen bank, overgrown with grass and rush, still stands up to 1.4 metres above the surrounding ground on the exterior, though the northern arc has been worn back to little more than a scarp. A flat-bottomed fosse, the defensive ditch that once ran around the outside of the bank, survives to the west and north-west, and there are traces of a slighter outer bank beyond it. The entrance, at three metres wide, opens towards the east-north-east, an orientation that appears frequently in Irish ringforts, possibly for practical reasons related to prevailing winds or simply convention. The interior is grass and rush-covered and has been poached, meaning that livestock have churned the ground over years of grazing, which accounts for much of the erosion the bank has suffered on its inner face.