From the outside, the low circular mound on the south-western slope of Ballincollig hill in County Kerry looks like dozens of other earthworks scattered across the Irish countryside. What makes this one quietly anomalous is that it almost certainly is not a ringfort at all, but a prehistoric ring-barrow, a type of funerary monument in which a central burial platform is encircled by a ditch and outer bank, likely dating to the Bronze Age. It was entirely unrecorded before the landowner pointed it out.

The site was identified and described by Michael Connolly as part of his 2008 doctoral thesis at University College Cork, a landscape study of prehistoric settlement in the Lee Valley area of Kerry. The central platform measures roughly 20 metres in diameter and sits about half a metre above the surrounding ground. Around it, an encircling ditch, averaging 2 metres wide and 0.3 metres deep, can still be traced along the northern and south-western sides. Further out, the remnants of a low outer bank survive to the south-west, though heavily eroded, rising only 0.5 metres on the internal face and 0.3 metres externally. Taking all elements together, the overall diameter of the monument extends to around 26.5 metres. One detail sets this site apart from most comparable earthworks: the ditch remains waterlogged throughout the year, fed by a spring visible in the south-western quadrant. That perpetual water may, over the centuries, have helped preserve the ditch profile even as the outer bank was gradually worn down.

The site sits in a corner of a gently sloping field with open views across the southern half of the horizon, and a small stream marks its southern and south-western boundary. Those looking for it should bear in mind that, to an untrained eye, the platform reads more like a slight natural rise than a deliberate construction. The ditch, where it survives, is the clearest indicator that what appears to be a modest hump in a Kerry hillside is something considerably older and more intentional.