What makes it curious is not its size, which is modest at around 27 metres along its longer axis, but rather the gap between what it once was and how completely it seemed to disappear from the official record. When the Ordnance Survey produced its six-inch map series in 1840, no earthwork was marked here at all.

By the time the more detailed 25-inch Ordnance Survey edition was published in 1897, the monument had finally been captured on paper. The map shows a D-shaped area, approximately 27 metres northwest to southeast and 21 metres northeast to southwest, defined by a scarp, essentially a steep earthen edge, and a waterlogged external fosse, which is the term for a ditch or trench that typically served both a drainage and a defensive function in early earthwork enclosures. The fosse runs from the northwest, around the north and east, and down through the south and southwest, giving the feature its characteristic curved outline. At the western side, a field boundary cuts across it; this boundary post-dates 1700, meaning it was laid out well after the earthwork itself, and the two features simply intersect without much ceremony, the later agricultural logic of the landscape overwriting whatever earlier purpose the enclosure once served. A related enclosure lies approximately 210 metres to the northeast, suggesting this corner of Ballybeg held more organised activity at some point than the present empty fields would suggest.

The monument sits 91 metres north of the townland boundary with Boherdotia and roughly 450 metres west of the county line with Tipperary, which places it in a borderland in more than one sense. Because it occupies wet pasture, the ground around it is likely to be soft underfoot, particularly in the wetter months, and the waterlogged fosse that helped define it on the 1897 map remains a feature of the landscape rather than a historical abstraction. The earthwork does not announce itself with visible stonework or a dramatic profile; it is the kind of site that rewards patience with aerial imagery. The Ordnance Survey Ireland orthophotographs taken between 2005 and 2012, as well as Google Earth imagery, show the feature clearly from above, where the scarp and fosse read as a coherent shape that is difficult to appreciate at ground level among the grass.