A raised platform roughly forty metres in diameter, partly defined by a curving field fence and partly by a steep earthen scarp about 1.1 metres high, is the kind of feature that most walkers would read as ordinary farmland topography. It is only when you know what to look for that the circular logic of the earthwork becomes apparent.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built between the sixth and tenth centuries, their banks and ditches serving as much as a marker of social status as a physical barrier around a family's dwelling and livestock. The Ballymonteen example appears on a map drawn by Bateman in 1716 to 1717, where a symbol just off the centre of the townland to the south-east marks its presence, suggesting it was already a recognised feature of the landscape three centuries ago, long after it would have been actively used. The northern portion of the site is heavily overgrown, which has made accurate measurement in that area difficult, and it remains tentatively classified as a possible rath rather than a confirmed one.