It does not appear on the Ordnance Survey's historic maps, it has no interpretive sign, and at ground level the land looks like ordinary pasture. The site only came to light as a result of aerial photography, and even now, its true character is best read from the sky rather than the ground.

The enclosure was identified during the Bruff aerial photographic survey of 1986, when it appeared as a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried earthworks cause subtle differences in plant growth above them, making ancient features legible from altitude even when they have long since been levelled at the surface. The monument measures approximately 67 metres northwest to southeast and 120 metres northeast to southwest, forming a large, roughly sub-rectangular shape. It is defined by a scarp, a steep change in ground level left by the original earthwork, and a water-filled fosse, which is an encircling ditch. What makes the site still more intriguing is that four possible barrows, that is, burial mounds of prehistoric or early medieval date, have been identified within the enclosure. The site lies about 15 metres east of the townland boundary with Goat Island and roughly 740 metres southeast of Greenpark House. By 2011 to 2013, satellite imagery from Digital Globe and Google Earth had confirmed the scarp and fosse were still readable on the ground, at least to an overhead lens.

The enclosure is on private agricultural land, and there is no formal public access. Visitors interested in cropmark archaeology of this kind are generally better served by consulting the aerial survey images and the National Monuments Service records rather than attempting to locate the earthwork on foot, where little is likely to be visible. The site is catalogued under reference LI040-212001 and the attached barrow records run to LI040-212001/004. For anyone with an interest in landscape archaeology, it is worth remembering that the area around Bruff was subject to sustained aerial survey in the 1980s, meaning Ballinstona North is one of several sites in this part of Limerick whose existence we owe entirely to a camera pointed downward from a passing aircraft.