The overall structure measures roughly twelve metres along its longer east-west axis and eight metres across, with the double-faced stonework rising to about a metre in height where it survives best along the south-east to east arc. Elsewhere the boundary has slumped into a low scarp, barely forty centimetres above the surrounding ground.

This type of construction, with inner and outer stone faces enclosing a rubble or earthen fill, is a technique used across prehistoric and early medieval Ireland in enclosures that served a variety of purposes, from settlement boundaries to ritual or funerary use. The precise function of the Barrees example is unknown, and without excavation it is difficult to assign it a confident date. What the double-coursed walling does suggest is that the enclosure was built to last and to define space clearly, which points away from anything purely temporary or agricultural. The modest scale, roughly the footprint of a large room, makes a purely domestic interpretation unlikely too; enclosures of this size in the Irish archaeological record are often associated with burial or with the demarcation of a particular, perhaps significant, piece of ground.