It takes a careful eye to read it now. The interior is heavily overgrown and the ground uneven underfoot, and the northern and eastern portions of the original circuit have been absorbed into a later stone wall and a laneway, leaving only the north-eastern quadrant of the earthwork visible as a distinct feature.

The enclosure was recorded as a complete circle on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, which gives at least a fixed point for understanding what has been lost since. Circular earthen enclosures of this kind are a familiar, if often overlooked, element of the Irish rural landscape. They are generally associated with the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and served a range of purposes, from enclosed farmsteads to boundaries with ritual or social significance. The term used in Irish archaeology for the more substantial examples is a ringfort, though smaller or less well-preserved examples like this one tend to be described more cautiously simply as enclosures. At Ballincolla, the relationship between the surviving bank and the modern field boundaries suggests a long, slow process of agricultural reuse, with each generation finding a practical reason to incorporate the old earthwork into their own arrangements rather than clear it away entirely.