A rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, is typically a roughly circular earthen enclosure, built during the early medieval period to demarcate a farmstead and offer a degree of protection. Thousands survive across Ireland in various states of preservation, many still clearly visible as raised banks or hollowed interiors in farmland. This one does not. It has been entirely levelled, leaving no surface trace whatsoever.

The enclosure was recorded on Ordnance Survey maps produced in 1841 to 1842, and again on the revised edition of 1914 to 1915, so it was still identifiable, at least cartographically, into the early twentieth century. At some point around the turn of that century, however, it was removed, most likely through agricultural clearance, the kind of quiet, incremental erasure that has claimed a significant proportion of Ireland's earthwork archaeology. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995 by Brandon in association with FÁS, documented the site as part of a wider effort to catalogue what remained, and what had already been lost, across the region. By the time that record was compiled, the rath at Ballyeagh had long since disappeared into the surrounding landscape.