Part of this early medieval ringfort has been folded into a post-1700 field wall, so that a structure originally built to define a farmstead now does double duty as a modern land division. The effect is that the monument is simultaneously preserved and obscured, its southern and western arc blending into the surrounding agricultural landscape while its northern and eastern arc retains something closer to its original form.

A ringfort, or rath, is one of the most common monument types in Ireland, typically a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and external ditch, used as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period. The example at Baunteen sits on a gentle north-west facing slope and was already recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840, shown as a circular bank. By the time the twenty-five-inch edition was produced in 1897, the incorporation into field boundaries was already apparent along the southern, western, and north-western stretches. When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland examined the site in 1999, they recorded a slightly raised circular area measuring roughly 27 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west. The northern and eastern arc retained a bank reduced to a scarp of about 0.6 metres in height, with an accompanying fosse, a ditch running around the outside of the bank, and a low external bank surviving particularly along the north-western to north-eastern and east to south-eastern sections. The incorporated field boundary along the south to north-western section measured a little over three metres across, absorbing and largely flattening those portions of the original earthwork.

The site sits in pasture, and the surrounding ground offers good views in most directions, which is consistent with the kind of elevated, watchful positioning typical of ringfort construction. Aerial imagery taken between 2011 and 2013 shows the north-eastern half of the monument still legible as a low bank, giving some sense of the original circuit even where ground-level visibility is limited. For anyone approaching across the field, the most readable section of the monument is that northern and eastern arc, where the earthwork has survived with greater integrity. The rest requires some patience and an eye for the way a field wall sits slightly differently on top of older ground.