It measures about 28 metres east to west and 22 metres north to south, and rises to between 3.5 and 4.7 metres, which makes it a substantial presence in the landscape even if the vegetation has done its best to obscure it. Encircling the raised area is a flat-bottomed fosse, a defensive ditch cut into the ground, surviving along its western to north-eastern arc and still measuring some 6.5 metres wide. A stream runs roughly northeast to southwest about 200 metres to the southeast, which would have provided a reliable water source for anyone making use of the site.

What makes this place quietly complicated is the question of what it actually is. It is classified in the record as an embanked enclosure, yet it was listed by the historian Brian Colfer in 1987 as a motte. A motte, in the context of medieval Ireland, is the flat-topped earthen mound at the centre of a motte-and-bailey castle, a form of fortification introduced by the Normans after their arrival in the twelfth century. The Normans were particularly active in County Wexford, which was among the first parts of Ireland they colonised, and earthen mottes were their characteristic early statement of territorial control. Whether this mound in Ballylucas was ever capped with a timber tower, as mottes typically were, is not recorded, but the dimensions and the surrounding fosse are consistent with that interpretation. The tension between its current classification and its earlier identification as a motte suggests the site has not yet given up all its answers.