To the Ordnance Survey in 1840 it looked like a flat moat, raised some ten feet above the surrounding field. To later observers its motte-like profile suggested Norman origins. It took an excavation to confirm that this oval earthwork, roughly 25 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, had been quietly accumulating its own history long before any Norman set foot in Limerick.

When archaeologist Hunt dug here in 1949, the findings reframed everything. A ringfort is an enclosed circular or oval farmstead, typically of Early Christian date in Ireland, defined by a bank and often a fosse, the term for the external ditch that accompanies it. What Hunt found was that this particular example had not been abandoned and replaced but had grown in successive phases, each layer of occupation building the mound a little higher, from a simple ringfort with a low bank up to the imposing raised platform visible today. Several superimposed buildings were uncovered, their ground plans suggesting intensive habitation from Early Christian times onward. A second, outer fosse was identified, now largely gone. The site had also revealed the ground plan of a house measuring roughly six metres by two and a half, recorded by Leask during an earlier visit in 1938, which Hunt later described as a Norman house site sitting on top of the accumulated mound. Perhaps most striking was what Hunt noted about the finds themselves: the organic material recovered from the excavation was in a remarkable state of preservation, a fortunate consequence of the way the site had been sealed by its own gradual growth.

The earthwork sits in farmland and remains visible today as a raised oval platform with a fosse still legible on its southern and western sides. Ballingarry church and graveyard lie about 135 metres to the east and serve as a useful landmark when approaching the area. As with many earthworks in agricultural settings, the monument is best appreciated from a slight distance or from aerial imagery, where the scarp defining the platform edge becomes clear. Satellite views, including those available through Google Earth, give a good sense of the oval form and the surviving fosse line that historical maps and excavation reports have long described.