This is a cashel, the term used in Ireland for a ringfort defined primarily by a stone enclosure rather than an earthen bank alone, and the one at Ballyhine carries within its fabric several centuries of alteration, reuse, and quiet erasure. By 1916 it had disappeared entirely from Ordnance Survey mapping, yet the structure itself remains on the ground, measuring around 50 metres along its longer axis.

The 1838 six-inch Ordnance Survey map recorded it as a circular enclosure of approximately 45 metres in diameter, but on the ground the form is distinctly oval. Its defining feature is an earthen scarp, rising to about 1.4 metres, topped with a stony bank between 4.5 and 5 metres wide. That bank retains a pronounced inner rim which may incorporate the footings of an original stone wall, while along the south-eastern to south-western arc there is a broad external slump of stone reaching 0.7 metres in height. The south-western to north-western stretch of the scarp is noticeably sharper, which appears to be the result of this side of the enclosure having been folded into a field boundary at some point, a fence now removed. A shallow depression running outside the scarp on the same side was initially read as a possible fosse, the defensive ditch often found around such enclosures, but is more likely the residue of that later field ditch. Inside, the ground is level and grassy, with faint traces of cultivation ridges running on a roughly north to south axis, suggesting the interior was turned over to agricultural use at some stage after the ringfort's original function had ended. A low ramp at the south-west currently provides access, though this too is considered a relatively modern addition rather than the original entrance. To the north-north-west, a discrete patch of quarrying has bitten into the scarp, another reminder of how gradually such sites are absorbed into the working landscape around them.