Easy to walk past without a second glance, the rath at Ballyglass survives as a slightly raised platform roughly sixteen metres across, its enclosing earthen bank worn almost flat, rising just half a metre on the outside and a mere quarter-metre on the interior. A field fence cuts across the southern arc of the bank on a roughly east-northeast to west-southwest axis, a later agricultural intrusion that has further eroded whatever definition the perimeter once held.

Raths, also known as ringforts, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as the enclosed homesteads of farming families between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. They consist of a circular area defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, within which a household would have kept its dwelling, outbuildings, and livestock. The example at Ballyglass sits in level pasture at the upper edge of an east-facing slope that drops approximately twenty metres down to the Carrowcor River, a position that would have offered both a modest vantage point and proximity to fresh water. The bank itself, around two and a half metres wide, is largely levelled now, its original profile softened by centuries of agricultural use on the surrounding land.