That omission is curious, because the earthwork sitting on a low rise in the undulating pasture here is substantial enough to read in the ground even today, its L-shaped footprint stretching roughly 45 metres along its east-west arm and 34 metres along its north-south one. Whether the surveyors missed it or simply judged it unremarkable by the standards of a landscape thick with ancient remains, the result is that this enclosure entered the documentary record late, its age and purpose left largely open.

What survives is a bank of earth and stone, irregular in plan and running along the northern and eastern sides of the raised area, standing around 0.6 metres high and nearly four metres wide in places. The more complex picture emerges on the western side, where the outer foot of the bank conceals a largely infilled fosse, that is, a defensive ditch, followed by a second low bank, another infilled fosse, and then a third bank beyond that. Three banks and two ditches arranged in sequence speak to a site that was once carefully bounded, its approaches controlled in a way that goes beyond a simple field enclosure. Within the interior, in the north-eastern corner, the remains of a hut site survive, suggesting that people lived here rather than merely penned livestock or stored goods. A low mound lies a short distance to the east, hinting that whatever activity happened at Ballyfaris was not confined to the enclosure itself but spread into the surrounding ground in ways that have yet to be fully understood.