There is no dramatic elevation, no crumbling tower, no interpretive sign. What is here instead is a subtly raised circular platform, roughly twenty-two metres across, enclosed by an earthen bank that has been slowly losing its definition for centuries. This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was built in enormous numbers across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive in various states of wear, and this one at Ballybeg is among the quieter examples.

The bank that encircles the interior is measurably more substantial on the southern side, where it still rises about a metre above the surrounding ground on its outer face, with a base spread of nearly seven metres. On the northern arc it has eroded considerably more. A short section of fosse, the ditch that would once have run outside the bank as an additional boundary, survives in the south-west quadrant, about eight metres in length and a little over two metres wide. The interior of the platform carries the faint corrugations of lazy beds, the raised cultivation ridges associated with potato growing that became widespread in the post-medieval period, running roughly east to west. That the rath's interior was turned over to cultivation at some point in the centuries after it ceased to function as an enclosure is not unusual; the raised, drier ground would have been practical. In the south-east, cattle have clipped back part of the bank, exposing the underlying material, a clay core with a notably high stone content. A scatter of thorn bushes has taken hold along the bank at that point, which is a common enough occurrence on earthworks left undisturbed long enough for scrub to establish itself. Two ponds lie close by, one immediately beyond the field boundary to the north and another to the east, features that may well have influenced the original choice of this modest ridge as a place to settle.