It measures roughly 29 metres east to west and just under 25 metres north to south, which puts it firmly within the range of the thousands of similar enclosures scattered across Ireland, yet each one carries its own quiet particularity of place and survival.

This is a rath, the most common form of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. A rath is essentially a circular or oval enclosure formed by an earthen bank, here accompanied by an external fosse, meaning a ditch dug on the outer side of the bank, the upcast soil from which typically formed the bank itself. These enclosures were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, in use roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and they housed families, their animals, and their stores within a defined and defensible boundary. The combination of bank and fosse at Ballybaun is a standard arrangement, and the west-facing slope would have given the occupants a broad outlook across the landscape. The breaches in the bank are described as numerous and modern, a familiar story for monuments that have sat in agricultural land for over a millennium, gradually losing ground to field clearance, drainage work, and the ordinary pressures of farming.