This double-banked arrangement, known as a bivallate rath, marks the site out from the more common single-banked ringforts that dot the Irish countryside. Ringforts in general are understood to have served as enclosed farmsteads during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and the extra bank at Cornafean would have added a meaningful layer of defence or prestige to whoever lived within.

What makes this particular example quietly interesting is its asymmetry. The outer bank and the external fosse that would ordinarily complete the circuit are absent along the north-east, east, and southern sides, leaving that arc of the enclosure incomplete or eroded away. On the northern side, breaks in the surviving banks align with a causeway, almost certainly the original entrance through which people, animals, and goods once passed. That a causeway survives at all is a reasonable indicator that the site retains some structural integrity, even if the full circuit of earthworks has not come down to the present in even condition.