A rath, as such earthworks are known, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built as a farmstead and defensive perimeter during the early medieval period in Ireland. What makes the Bellanalack example quietly arresting is not its grandeur but its company: just 195 metres to the east lies a castle ringwork, a different class of monument entirely, associated with the Norman period and representing an altogether later layer of occupation on the same stretch of high ground.

The site was recorded on the revised 1910 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, where it appeared as an oval-shaped earthwork already being crossed by a trackway running roughly west-northwest to east-southeast through its south-western sector. That trackway was an early intrusion, and it was not the last. By 1973, when the monument was formally described, it measured approximately 27 metres in diameter and retained a low enclosing scarp, but sections of the perimeter had already been dug away, particularly on the west to north-northwest arc and the north to north-northeast side. The interior was uneven, suggesting disturbance below the surface as well as around the edges. Aerial photography confirms that the earthwork persists today, though in considerably more disturbed condition than even that 1973 account recorded.