From the air, the pattern becomes clearer: aerial photographs taken in 1968 revealed earthworks suggestive of a medieval or post-medieval settlement clustered around a church, and it is only at that remove that the logic of the landscape snaps into focus.

The main enclosure sits roughly 45 metres north of the church and takes a broadly rectangular form, measuring about 30.8 metres east-northeast to west-southwest and 14.5 metres across. Its boundaries survive as grassed-over wall-footings, the external face still rising just over a metre above ground level in places, with a probable entrance gap of around 1.2 metres on the southern side. Inside, the space is not simply open: two internal divisions, low grass-covered banks running roughly northwest to southeast, subdivide the interior. One of them trails off before reaching the far wall, running only from the northwest into the centre of the enclosure, which gives the whole arrangement a slightly unresolved quality, as though caught mid-construction or mid-abandonment. Spread out to the southwest and southeast, at distances ranging from 27 to 68 metres from the enclosure, are the wall-footings of three possible house sites. A smaller enclosure occupies the ground immediately northwest of the church itself.

What survives at Ballintogher is the kind of settlement archaeology that rewards patience and low expectations of drama. The walls have largely dissolved back into the hillside; what remains is a series of slight rises and depressions that, once you know what you are looking at, begin to resolve into rooms, boundaries, and entrances. The panoramic position on the ridge suggests the site commanded considerable visibility across the surrounding uplands, whatever its precise function or period.