A ring-barrow is a roughly circular earthwork consisting of a central raised platform, a surrounding ditch, and an outer bank, and this one near Balrath is an unusually large example: nearly 49 metres across at its widest, with an outer bank that reaches 8.5 metres in width at its best-preserved stretches. The platform at the centre, steep-sided and flat-topped, rises about a metre above the base of the ditch, though it barely clears the surrounding ground level, which gives the whole structure a curiously sunken, inward quality. Much of its perimeter is now obscured by trees and bushes, and farm vehicles have sheared off sections of the outer bank on the north and south sides, but the monument is largely intact.

What makes this hilltop genuinely unusual is not just the barrow itself but the concentration of things around it. A second ring-barrow, almost identical in form, lies less than 200 metres to the southwest. Running nearby is a substantial field bank, flat-topped and up to 1.5 metres high, which kinks sharply and cuts through the southeastern side of that neighbouring barrow. When surveyed in 2012 by David McGuinness, this bank and its associated ditch were identified as possibly forming part of the Black Pig's Dyke, a linear earthwork known from folklore, place-names, and medieval literary sources, and first connected to this area by Kane writing in 1916 and 1917. The Black Pig's Dyke is one of those Irish monuments that sits at the edge of history and legend, a series of discontinuous linear earthworks whose original purpose remains debated, but which traditions across Ulster and the midlands have long associated with boundaries, migrations, and the movements of a mythological black pig that gouged the land with its snout. Whether the bank here is genuinely part of that system or simply a later field boundary that Kane's framework drew in, the coincidence of two large ring-barrows and a possibly ancient linear earthwork on the same hill is striking. The stony earth visible where cattle have eroded the bank suggests the builders were working with whatever the subsoil offered rather than importing material from elsewhere.