Its eastern arc is cut through by a field bank, a later boundary line drawn without apparent concern for whatever came before, leaving the older form visible only to those looking down from above.

The enclosure came to wider attention through aerial photographs taken by Michael Moore in the summer of 1996. Aerial survey has long been one of the more reliable ways of detecting such features in the Irish landscape; from the ground, a low earthwork or a subtle cropmark can be nearly invisible, but from the air the geometry of earlier occupation becomes legible. Circular enclosures of this type are a common enough category across Ireland, ranging from prehistoric ring ditches to early medieval ringforts, the latter being enclosed farmsteads typically bounded by an earthen bank and ditch. Without excavation it is difficult to place Ballinadrum's enclosure more precisely within that range, but the form itself tells a quiet story of deliberate construction at some point before the present field system was laid down over it.