Conjoined ringforts are relatively uncommon in the Irish landscape, and the fact that a modern road bisects this pair gives the site a slightly uncanny quality, the two halves belonging to each other yet formally separated.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Most are roughly circular earthworks defined by one or more banks and ditches, and they served as the domestic and agricultural centres of individual farming families or minor chieftains. At Cloonmoyle, the northern rath is D-shaped in plan, measuring around 45 metres east to west, and is defined by a scarp with an external fosse, that is, a ditch dug outside the main boundary. The southern rath is subcircular, slightly larger at 46 metres north to south and 41.5 metres east to west, and more elaborately constructed with two banks and an intervening fosse between them. Of its outer defences, the fosse and outer bank survive mainly on the south-west to north-west arc. Both are poorly preserved overall, worn down by centuries of agriculture and weather. Within the interior of the southern rath lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that would have been used for storage or, in times of threat, as a place of concealment. The site sits on a gentle rise in undulating grassland, which would have made good practical sense to its original occupants, offering drainage and a degree of visibility across the surrounding land.