The feature is a sub-circular enclosure, roughly 50 to 60 metres in diameter, and it came to wider attention not through excavation or fieldwork but through lidar imagery, a remote-sensing method that strips away vegetation and surface clutter to expose the faint geometry of older ground disturbances beneath.

Enclosures of this rough shape and scale are scattered across Ireland and generally belong to the early medieval period, though without excavation any individual example remains difficult to date precisely. They served a variety of purposes: ringforts enclosed farmsteads and their associated outbuildings, while larger or more elaborate versions sometimes had ritual or ceremonial functions. At Ballyclogh, the enclosure was identified from lidar data and brought to notice by Colm Chambers, suggesting it had not previously featured in the standard record of local monuments. That it required airborne survey to detect at all points to how thoroughly the visible traces have been reduced, whether by centuries of agriculture, vegetation growth, or simple erosion.