This particular example at Ballyea sits at a slight elevation above its nearest neighbour, which itself occupies the same small cluster of monuments, and the proximity of the three suggests this corner of the county was once a focus of some local significance during the period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when ringforts were the dominant form of rural settlement across Ireland.

A ringfort, or rath, is essentially a farmstead enclosed by one or more circular earthen banks, built to define a household's space and offer a degree of protection for people and livestock. This one follows a pattern recorded in detail by the archaeologist M. J. O'Kelly during fieldwork carried out in 1942 and 1943. His description, published in 1943, notes a raised central platform edged by a bank, the whole encircled by a fosse, which is a defensive ditch cut into the ground around the exterior. The bank rises to a maximum height of around 2.4 metres above the fosse bottom, and the overall diameter of the enclosure stretches to approximately 47 metres. The entrance is on the western side, where a gap in the bank connects to a causeway carrying a path across the ditch, an arrangement that would have made access deliberate and controlled. At the time of O'Kelly's survey, this fort and its immediate neighbour were both described as densely overgrown.

The overgrowth noted in the 1940s may well persist, so anyone visiting should expect a site that does not present itself cleanly. The outline of the monument remains visible on aerial photography, which can be a useful tool for orientating yourself before approaching on the ground. Looking for the slight rise of the platform and the depression of the surrounding fosse gives a clearer sense of the structure than any surface view alone. The western entrance causeway is the most architecturally specific feature to seek out, and comparing this fort's slightly elevated position against that of its nearby companion, just ninety metres or so away, gives a real sense of how closely this group of monuments was arranged in the early medieval landscape.