The site at Ballintemple sits on a south-facing slope, and what survives is a roughly circular enclosure measuring around fifty metres north to south and fifty-six metres east to west, bounded by a bank of earth and stone that reaches a maximum height of just over two metres. A gap three metres wide in the western side of the bank likely marks the original entrance.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath when the enclosing element is earthen rather than stone, was the standard form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They were farmsteads, home to a family and their livestock, and the enclosing bank offered both a degree of physical security and a clear statement of social territory. What makes this example quietly interesting is the care taken to account for the natural gradient. The interior has been deliberately raised on its southern side to create a level living surface despite the slope, and a possible inner bank, surviving now only as a low scarp between about sixty and sixty-five centimetres high and running from the south-east to the south-west, hints at a more complex internal arrangement than the outer bank alone would suggest. That kind of internal subdivision is not uncommon in ringforts, but it is not always so clearly preserved.