No earthwork breaks the surface, no ridge or hollow betrays its presence. The only evidence that it exists at all is a cropmark, that subtle discolouration in growing vegetation caused by buried features affecting soil moisture and nutrient levels, captured in an aerial photograph taken in July 1970 as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography.

The enclosure sits in gently undulating meadowland, approximately fifty metres south of a ringfort, a type of circular defended settlement that was the most common form of rural habitation in early medieval Ireland. The proximity of the two features is unlikely to be coincidental. Enclosures of this kind often formed part of a wider pattern of land use and activity around ringforts, whether as ancillary enclosures for livestock, cultivation, or other functions that archaeologists continue to debate. Whether the Ballingarrane enclosure is contemporary with its neighbouring ringfort, or belongs to a different period entirely, is something the aerial photograph alone cannot settle. The depth and lushness of the meadow grass that now covers the slope may be actively suppressing whatever faint surface traces might otherwise have been readable.