It does not announce itself dramatically. The earthwork is subtle enough that a person crossing the field might register only a slight rise underfoot, a shallow ditch, and a gentle outer bank, before the land levels off again. Yet this is a ring-barrow, a form of prehistoric funerary monument in which a central burial mound is enclosed by a surrounding ditch, called a fosse, and an outer earthen bank. The wide views opening out to the west and north suggest the site was not placed here incidentally.

The monument measures 20.5 metres in diameter overall. The fosse averages two metres in width, and the outer bank extends to 3.7 metres. The central mound, roughly 9.5 metres across, is dome-shaped and rises between 0.45 and 0.6 metres above the fosse floor. At its summit there is a shallow depression, which may indicate earlier disturbance or simply the slow settling of centuries. The inner face of the outer bank has eroded away at the south-east, leaving that section less defined than the rest of the circuit. The monument was recorded on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps in both the 1842 and 1920 editions, confirming it was visible and recognisable to surveyors across that span of time. A second ring-barrow lies approximately 88 metres to the north-east, which raises the possibility that this part of Ballyvara once served as a more extensive funerary or ceremonial landscape, with monuments positioned in deliberate relation to one another across the gently rolling ground.