The surrounding land drains poorly, and the slight hill it occupies would have offered both a dry platform and an unobstructed sightline across the landscape, two practical advantages that together tell you something about why this particular spot was selected.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, most commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries, though some are older. The Ballyhane example is a bivallate example, meaning it has two concentric banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. That fosse is three to four metres wide and survives to an external depth of around 0.7 metres. The inner bank has suffered more over the centuries and in places has been worn down to little more than a scarp, a low edge rather than a proper bank, while the outer bank holds up better and reads most clearly when approached from the north or east. The whole enclosure measures roughly 32 metres east to west, and the interior is not quite level; it follows the natural slope of the hillock, rising gradually from south to north. At the east side there is what appears to be a causewayed entrance, a gap in the earthworks about 3.5 metres wide where the ground rises to allow passage across the ditch, suggesting the original approach came from that direction.