The site at Ballyglass sits at the centre of this grouping, with three further ringforts lying within roughly 130 to 180 metres to its south-west, east, and north-east. Whether this reflects a single extended family compound, a small community of enclosed farmsteads, or something else entirely, the density of these earthworks in such a compact area gives the landscape a layered quality that the undisturbed grass does nothing to advertise.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are roughly circular enclosed settlements, typically of early medieval date, formed by one or more earthen banks with a ditch between them. This particular example is bivallate, meaning it has two concentric banks separated by a fosse, or ditch. When it was recorded in 1970, the inner bank of earth and stone measured approximately 24 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 20 metres across from north-west to south-east. Parts of the inner bank had been reduced to a scarp, and quarrying had disturbed the western side. The outer bank survived in fragments, visible from the north-north-east around to the east-south-east and again from the south-west to the west. No original entrance could be identified. The interior still carried traces of cultivation ridges running north-east to south-west, along with the footprint of a rectangular house site. The form of the earthwork has shifted across the historical record: an estate map of Rathconrath from 1776, held in the National Library of Ireland, shows it as circular, while the 1837 Ordnance Survey six-inch map depicts it as D-shaped, with the house site marked at its centre. By the time the revised 25-inch map was produced in 1913, a field boundary had been built along its north-eastern edge, enclosing the monument within the working geometry of a later agricultural landscape.