No Ordnance Survey historic map ever recorded it. The monument at Ballinard only came to light in 1986, when an aerial photographic survey of the Bruff area captured it as a faint circular cropmark, the kind of ghost-image that appears in dry summers when buried features cause overlying vegetation to grow or wither at slightly different rates than the surrounding soil.

The feature is classified as a ditch barrow, a prehistoric funerary monument defined not by a raised mound alone but by an encircling fosse, which is simply a ditch, cut around the central area. This type of monument is broadly related to ring-barrows, earthworks associated with burial and ritual in the prehistoric period, and there is indeed a ring-barrow recorded just 270 metres to the west-northwest. The Ballinard example sits in improved agricultural pasture, roughly 90 metres east of the Camoge River, which at this point also functions as a townland boundary separating Ballinard from Cahercorney. The site was compiled in the record by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly and uploaded in November 2020. Subsequent satellite and aerial orthoimagery, including captures from 2005 to 2012, 2011 to 2013, and as recently as September 2020, has confirmed the earthwork as a small but legible circular feature in the landscape.

The monument sits on private farmland, so access would require the landowner's permission. Because it survives as a low earthwork rather than a prominent mound, it is the kind of feature that rewards patience and the right conditions. Dry summers, when cropmarks are most pronounced, offer the clearest view from above, though the circular fosse is reportedly visible on orthoimagery taken across multiple seasons. Anyone interested in the broader landscape should note the nearby ring-barrow to the west, which suggests this stretch of the Camoge valley may have carried greater significance in the prehistoric period than its present-day appearance of tidy pasture would suggest.