Revealed not by its standing remains but by the pattern of post-holes and foundation trenches left in the earth, the structure appears to have been raised for a single occasion and then deliberately set alight, leaving behind little more than charcoal, ash, and the faint geometry of what once stood.

Excavations carried out by Doody between April and May 1982 uncovered the traces within a ring-barrow, a type of burial monument defined by a circular enclosing ditch. At the centre lay a cist, a small stone-lined grave, containing cremated remains. Surrounding it were the post-holes of a roughly oval timber building measuring approximately 5.1 metres north to south and 7 metres east to west, with what appears to have been a D-shaped porch or entrance area projecting from one side, its single doorway, about a metre wide, oriented to the north-east. Doody's interpretation is striking: the building was not a dwelling or a permanent shrine but a structure purpose-built for the burial ceremony itself. Once that ceremony was complete, the timber frame was burned. The evidence for this is direct, a substantial concentration of charcoal and ash recovered from the foundation trenches and from the fosse, the ditch of the surrounding ring-barrow. The burning, in other words, was not accidental or incidental. It was the conclusion of the ritual.

What makes Ballyveelish unusual is the specificity of its implied intention. Timber structures associated with prehistoric burial are known elsewhere in Ireland, but the combination here, a bespoke building, a cist burial, a ring-barrow, and a deliberate final burning, suggests a carefully choreographed ceremony in which the architecture itself was consumed as part of the act of interment.