A lane running north to south through the middle of an ancient enclosure is itself a kind of small historical argument. The lane came later, obviously, cutting the original oval form in two, yet the older shape persisted well enough that nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey cartographers could still read it clearly and mark it on their 1840 six-inch map. What survives on the ground today is only the eastern half: a D-shaped, grass-covered area roughly 26 metres north to south and 14 metres east to west, its edge defined by a slight scarp, the kind of low earthen drop that is easy to miss unless you are looking for it.

Enclosures of this general type are common across Ireland, though their purposes vary considerably. Some are the remains of early medieval farmsteads or raths, a rath being a roughly circular or oval earthwork enclosing a family's living and working space. Others served as animal pounds, burial grounds, or ecclesiastical precincts. Without excavation, the function of the Ballingarra example remains open. What the 1840 map records is an oval approximately 40 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south, situated on a gentle east-facing slope of a broad plateau, a position that would have offered reasonable drainage and a wide outlook. The bisecting lane has since reduced the visible archaeology to that eastern scarp alone, the western portion presumably absorbed into the laneway corridor or the ground beside it over the intervening generations.