The whole site measures roughly 22 by 26 metres, yet it sits only half a metre above the surrounding field level, a gentle anomaly in an otherwise unremarkable slope that faces north. It is the kind of thing you might walk across without registering what is underfoot.

This is a ring barrow, a funerary monument associated broadly with the Bronze Age in Ireland, in which a central mound or platform is enclosed by a circular ditch, known as a fosse, and an outer earthen bank. At Ballyhimock, the subcircular interior measures approximately 11 metres east to west and 14 metres north to south. The fosse is shallow and the external bank modest, rising only about 0.5 metres on its outer face and a fraction of that on the inner side. These are not dramatic dimensions, and that is rather the point. Ring barrows tend to be among the quieter prehistoric monument types, lacking the bulk of a passage tomb or the obvious drama of a standing stone, yet they represent deliberate, organised use of landscape for the commemoration of the dead. The slight but consistent elevation of the entire site above field level suggests the monument has survived in reasonable condition, probably because the land here has remained as pasture rather than being ploughed over.