The monument, which measures around 35 metres in diameter according to the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, now survives only in fragments. What remains visible runs from the western to the northern arc: an inner scarp, a fosse, which is simply a ditch dug to define and defend a boundary, and an outer bank. The southern portion has been quarried away entirely, and a road has cut through the northern edge, leaving less than half of what was once a complete ring.

Enclosures of this type are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape. They are generally understood as the remains of enclosed settlements, most often associated with the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, though some are older. They would originally have consisted of an earthen bank and ditch surrounding a domestic space, perhaps a farmstead or the residence of a local landowner. This particular example sits in grassland on a south-facing slope, an orientation that would have offered practical advantages of shelter and light. A second enclosure lies approximately 60 metres to the northwest, suggesting that this part of Cloonlara was once a more populated or organised settlement than its present quiet fields suggest.

The quarrying that removed much of the southern section was likely a practical extraction of material rather than any deliberate clearance, a fate that has befallen countless similar monuments across Ireland. What survives is subtle. A visitor who knew nothing of the site's mapped outline might walk across the western arc without recognising it for what it is, a faint rise and hollow in the grass that records the edge of a life lived here more than a thousand years ago.