What makes it worth pausing over is the layering of its construction: a stone-faced inner bank, a fosse (the technical term for the encircling ditch), and an outer bank beyond that, the last surviving most clearly from the west-northwest around to the north. An entrance gap opens to the east, the direction favoured by many ringforts across Ireland, possibly for practical reasons of morning light and prevailing weather, possibly for reasons we can no longer fully recover.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined primarily by earthen banks, were the commonest form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. They typically housed a single farming family, with the enclosing banks serving as much to pen livestock and signal status as to provide serious military defence. This example at Ballymoney is subcircular in plan, measuring around 39 metres east to west and 34.5 metres north to south, placing it in the middle range of known examples. The stone-facing on the inner bank suggests some investment of labour and material, lending the enclosure a slightly more substantial character than a purely earthen construction. The site was recorded by Neary in 1914 and is described as being in fair condition, which, given the pressures on such monuments from agricultural use over the intervening century, is a reasonable state to have maintained.