It is a ringfort, or rath, the kind of early medieval enclosure that once numbered in the tens of thousands across Ireland, built as a defended farmstead typically between the seventh and tenth centuries. This one has been partially levelled and folded into the surrounding field, yet the outline persists, a roughly circular area measuring about thirty metres north to south and twenty-six metres east to west, defined by an earthen bank and an accompanying fosse, the ditch that runs around the outside of the enclosure.

What makes the Ballykenny example quietly interesting is the evidence of recent interference alongside the ancient. According to the survey compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011, the fosse had been re-cut not long before the record was made, with the spoil from that work dumped back onto the bank to the northwest and northeast. The bank itself is modest by any measure, standing only about thirty centimetres above the interior and around fifteen centimetres above the exterior ground surface. The fosse is shallow too, roughly fifteen centimetres deep and sixty centimetres wide, running from the northeast around to the southwest. A road has clipped the southwestern to northwestern arc of the fosse, truncating it and removing any trace of the enclosure on that side. The interior is level and under pasture, giving nothing obvious away.

The site sits in ordinary farmland, and there is no formal access or interpretive signage to speak of. Anyone seeking it out should be aware that the earthworks are genuinely subtle; the difference in height between the bank and the surrounding ground is small enough to disappear entirely in certain light or when the grass is long. The clearest views tend to come in low winter sun or from a slight elevation, when the shadows thrown by even a modest bank become legible. The re-cut fosse means that part of the circuit is slightly more pronounced than it might otherwise be, particularly along the northeastern curve, and that is likely the best place to begin reading the shape of the place.