Among these is a recorded enclosure, the kind of earthwork feature that appears across the Irish countryside in various forms, from the circular raths and ringforts of the early medieval period to the enclosing boundaries of monastic settlements. At Jerpoint, the proximity to a major ecclesiastical site raises the obvious question of whether the two are connected, and the enclosure may represent the outer boundary of monastic land use, a domestic farmstead, or something older still.

Enclosures of this type were a fundamental unit of early Irish settlement. A ringfort, or rath, typically consisted of a circular earthen bank and ditch enclosing a domestic space, while ecclesiastical enclosures tended to follow a similar form but served a different purpose, marking out sacred or communal ground associated with a church or monastery. The Cistercians who settled at Jerpoint arrived in the twelfth century, but the area had earlier ecclesiastical associations, and the landscape around the abbey is layered with activity across several periods. Without more detailed survey information, it is difficult to assign the enclosure to any particular phase with confidence, but its presence is a reminder that the abbey itself was not built into a blank landscape.