These circular enclosures, built mainly in the early medieval period as farmsteads for a single family or small community, almost always preserve some trace of a gap in the bank where people and livestock passed through. At Ballinlough in north Tipperary, no such feature has been identified, which gives the site a quietly sealed quality, as though whatever it once enclosed has decided to keep the matter private.

The fort is a substantial one. Its enclosing bank describes a circle roughly 77 metres across from east to west, making it considerably larger than the average Irish rath. A rath, to use the Irish term for this type of earthwork, typically consists of one or more earthen banks with an accompanying fosse, the fosse being the external ditch from which material was dug to raise the bank. Here there is a clear outer fosse, and possibly a further external bank beyond that, suggesting the site was built with some care for defence or at least for display. The whole thing sits on an east-facing slope in mountainous country, which means the interior drops away steeply from west to east. That slope has complicated the site's survival. A stream has cut through the eastern side, destroying the bank entirely in that sector, and there are signs of possible quarrying in the same area, which has further unsettled the ground. Elsewhere the bank survives, though broken in places, reaching up to a metre and a half in external height at its best.