What makes it worth a second look is the tension between what survives and what has been lost: two concentric earthen banks, each with its own scale and presence, partially eaten away by the field boundaries of a working farm. The outer ring has nearly merged with the hedgerow system. The inner ring still has some height to it. Together they describe a shape that was once deliberate and defensive, and is now just about legible.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen rather than stone, were the most common form of enclosed farmstead in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They were lived in by farming families, not warriors, and the banks and ditches served to keep livestock in and wolves or rival neighbours out as much as anything else. This example at Ballynagaul is a bivallate rath, meaning it has two concentric enclosures rather than the single bank found at simpler sites. The interior measures approximately 44 metres north to south and 40 metres east to west. The inner bank stands around 1.75 metres on the inside and 2.6 metres on the exterior face, with a fosse, that is a defensive ditch, some 4 metres wide running between the two rings. The entrance, roughly 2 metres wide at the northwest, is thought to be original, though it has been widened in more recent times. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the national survey in August 2011.

The site sits in pasture on a hilltop, which means the ground within the enclosure is level but tends toward the marshy side. Both banks are heavily overgrown with trees and bushes, which actually helps to trace the circuit from a short distance away, even where the earthworks themselves have been cut by modern field boundaries that form a corner at the southeast. Visitors should expect wet ground underfoot in any season other than a dry summer. The enclosing vegetation makes the interior feel enclosed and slightly apart from the surrounding fields, even though the fort's edges have been compromised. The northwest entrance is the most coherent surviving feature and gives the clearest sense of how the original approach was managed.