This kind of monument, an enclosed area defined by a bank or ditch and most likely of early medieval origin, would once have marked a farmstead or settlement boundary. At Ballydrehid, the structure has been levelled, probably when a field boundary that once formed its north-eastern side was removed. What remains is a gentle scarp in the south-western quadrant, a faint crease in pasture ground on undulating terrain.

The enclosure has an unusual cartographic history. When the Ordnance Survey produced its first six-inch map in 1840, no trace of it was recorded at all. By the time the revised edition appeared between 1901 and 1905, something had become visible enough to mark, shown as a curving scarp with hachuring on the south side only, the conventional symbol for a slope or earthwork edge. A hillock immediately to the south-east was partially incorporated into the enclosure's form, suggesting the monument's layout took advantage of natural rises in the ground. The clearest picture of what the site looked like in more recent times comes from an aerial photograph taken in April 1974, in which the enclosure appears as an angular boundary defined by hedgerow. That hedgerow is now gone, and with it most of the legible structure of the monument.