But what survives here at Ballynahown is a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The earthwork is modest, measuring approximately 26 metres in diameter, and it sits just 55 metres east of the townland boundary with Kilmihil, quietly embedded in agricultural land that has been worked and drained around it for generations.

The site appears on the historic Ordnance Survey maps under the name 'Rathard', which is annotated on the old OSi sheets and gives the place a legible identity across nearly two centuries of cartography. The 1840 six-inch map depicts it as a raised circular area defined by a scarp, and the surveyors noted at the time, in their Ordnance Survey Name Book covering the stretch from Abbeyfeale to Bruree, that 'in the W of the townland there is a small fort'. By the time the 1897 twenty-five-inch map was made, the record was more detailed: a sub-circular shape with an external fosse, that is, a defensive ditch or moat, running from the south-southwest around through west, north, and northeast, with a gap left at the northeast. That gap likely marks the original entrance. A further earthwork lies approximately 80 metres to the northeast, suggesting the landscape once held more than one enclosed site in close proximity.

More recent aerial imagery, including Digital Globe orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013, shows the fosse still holding water along the eastern and southern arc, which is a useful thing to know before approaching across the field. A linear cropmark intersects the monument at its southern edge, the trace of an old water channel running roughly north to south, visible from above even where nothing is obvious at ground level. The monument is partially overgrown, so the raised interior platform and the surviving scarp are easier to read in low winter light or from higher ground nearby than in summer when the vegetation is full. It is the kind of site that rewards patience and a good map rather than a marked path.