The earthwork in question is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. These circular enclosures, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, once protected farmsteads and livestock. At Ballindeasig, the enclosing bank survives across much of its circuit, running from the west around to the south-east, with a gravel pathway and the house itself occupying the south-east to west portion. The interior, around sixty metres across, has been absorbed into the domestic grounds of the adjacent house, its bank serving as a garden boundary rather than a farmstead perimeter.

The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, where it is marked as a hachured circular hollow, the bank apparently planted with trees along its outer edge. By the time the 1935 OS six-inch map was produced, those trees had gone, the interior appeared more oval in outline, and the eastern section of the bank may have been altered in some way, with trees recorded beyond the bank to the east rather than on it. The subtle shift in shape between the two maps hints at gradual modification over the intervening decades, whether through gardening, clearance, or the general pressure of domestic use. Excavations were carried out at the site in 1993, though the details of what was found remain outside the scope of what the available record covers here.