The shed now occupies most of the north-western interior of this ringfort, a fact recorded in aerial photography from November 2011 and entirely in keeping with the pragmatic relationship Irish farmers have long maintained with the ancient earthworks scattered across their fields. The structure is still legible beneath it all, which is perhaps the more surprising detail.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is an enclosed circular settlement dating broadly from the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD, typically used as a farmstead and defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. This particular example at Ballintue is a large one, measuring approximately 46 metres across from east to west. It sits on raised ground surrounded by grassland, with wide views in most directions, a siting that would have made both practical and social sense to whoever built it. The enclosing bank is poorly preserved and broken by several disturbance gaps, but the external fosse, the defensive ditch surrounding the bank, survives best along the southern and eastern sides. At the north-east, a formal entrance gap is still visible, complete with a causeway crossing the fosse; the causeway measures 5.7 metres wide and rises about a metre above the ditch floor. In the south-east quadrant, a large perforated stone sits in the grass, its original purpose unrecorded. Field fences cut across the monument at the north-north-west and south, further complicating the picture. Two other ringforts lie within 400 metres, one 350 metres to the north-west and another 380 metres to the north-east, suggesting this was once a settled and reasonably populated landscape rather than an isolated holding.