The ringfort at Ballycannon sits in a natural hollow in low-lying pasture, and what was once a roughly circular enclosure of around thirty metres in diameter is now divided by an east-to-west field boundary, leaving only the southern portion in any legible condition. That surviving arc takes a D-shape, measuring approximately twenty metres north to south and twenty-eight metres east to west, and it is this bisected geometry that gives the site its quietly unsettling quality. Something is clearly present, but the eye keeps reaching for a shape the landscape no longer provides.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined primarily by earthen banks rather than stone, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its immediate outbuildings between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. The Ballycannon example was recorded as an embanked circular enclosure on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1841, meaning it was sufficiently intact at that point to be mapped with confidence. The earthen bank on the southern side still carries some presence: on its interior face it rises to around 0.8 metres, and on its exterior to 1.7 metres at its best-preserved southeastern to southwestern arc. Running along the outside of the bank is a fosse, the term for the ditch from which the bank material was originally dug, reaching about half a metre in depth and just over two metres in width. This fosse is largely waterlogged through the northeast to northwest section and becomes noticeably shallower and drier towards the west-northwest. The interior, where it survives, is level and under pasture. North of the field boundary, no trace of the monument remains visible at ground level. The site was compiled by Denis Power and aerial photographs were taken in March 2006 as part of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland record.

The site sits in working farmland, so any visit requires awareness of private land and the need to seek appropriate permission. The low-lying, hollow setting means the ground can be wet underfoot, particularly around the northern arc of the fosse, which is described as mainly waterlogged. The southern bank, best preserved between the southeast and southwest, offers the clearest sense of the original enclosure's scale. The field boundary cutting across the monument is itself worth noting as a reminder of how modern agricultural boundaries have gradually eroded the legibility of early medieval landscapes throughout Ireland.