It was only in 2001, when the Discovery Programme examined aerial photography of the area, that the feature was identified as something more deliberate: a stone-built platform, positioned off-centre to the north-west of the lake, roughly 320 metres from the nearest shoreline. Modern mapping shows it as a small, nearly circular island, measuring approximately 20.5 metres north to south and 21 metres east to west. What looks like a natural irregularity in the lough turns out to be a crannog, an artificial or semi-artificial island built from stone and other materials, a form of construction used in Ireland from the Bronze Age well into the medieval period as a defensible or otherwise advantageous place to live.

The site at Ballyblood is subtle almost to the point of invisibility. A single tree marks the spot, and reeds close in from the west and north, softening whatever structural definition the limestone construction once had. When surveyors visited in 2017, water levels were too high to allow access, and what was visible amounted to a modest cluster of limestone blocks just breaking the surface. The 1921 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map records the location, though without recognising it for what it is, treating those same stones as a natural outcrop. The gap between that cartographic shrug and the 2001 aerial identification captures something of how easily these sites dissolve back into the landscape when they are no longer in use.