The earthen bank that once enclosed it was levelled around 1973, leaving the site present on maps and in records but absent from the landscape itself. Ringforts, also known as raths, are roughly circular enclosures defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and they were built in their thousands across Ireland during the early medieval period, typically serving as enclosed farmsteads. This one has been reduced to the category of negative evidence, a place defined primarily by what was removed.

What local information preserves about the site is modest but telling. The ringfort was enclosed by a single earthen bank, the most common form, and it is said to have been approximately half the size of a related ringfort in an adjoining field to the north-east. That neighbouring example survives, and the size comparison suggests the Ballydaly rath was a relatively modest enclosure even before its levelling. The two sites sitting in adjoining fields hints at a small cluster of early medieval activity in this stretch of mid Cork, a pattern seen elsewhere in the Irish countryside where related farmsteads or family groups occupied nearby plots.