The one considered here is modest in scale, measuring around seventeen by eighteen metres across its interior, but it occupies its elevated position with a certain quiet purposefulness, offering open views to both the north and south across the surrounding countryside.

A rath, as this type of monument is known, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and, typically, an outer ditch called a fosse. They were built predominantly during the early medieval period, between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for families of some local standing. This example at Knocknaraha is defined by a round-topped earthen bank about 3.3 metres wide, still standing to an external height of between 0.7 and 1.1 metres, though the interior has subsided so that its inner face rises only about 0.25 metres above the enclosed ground. There is no visible fosse here. A gap of around two metres on the eastern side may represent the original entrance, which was the most common orientation for rath entrances across Ireland. The monument was already considered significant enough to be marked on Ordnance Survey maps of both 1840 and 1916, depicted with the hachure markings that cartographers used to indicate earthworks and raised ground features.

Today the interior is rough going, undulating gently downward to the south and thickly covered in rushes, with no visible features remaining inside the bank. The eastern stretch of the bank is overgrown. Despite its worn condition, the rath reads clearly enough from the outside, and the proximity of the second ringfort to the east adds an additional layer of interest for anyone with an eye for the density of early medieval settlement that survives, in various states, across the Clare landscape.