That repurposing is part of what makes it interesting: a structure built perhaps a thousand or more years ago has been folded into a later farming system so seamlessly that the two are now difficult to separate by eye.

A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, typically built during the early medieval period in Ireland as a farmstead or place of habitation for a family of some local standing. The example at Ballynagoul appears on the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map as a circular earthwork, one of the earliest systematic cartographic records of such features across the country. By the time the 25-inch map was produced in 1897, surveyors recorded a raised, roughly circular area measuring approximately 27 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, defined by a scarp. A fosse, the ditch that typically runs just outside the main bank of a ringfort, and an outer bank remain visible along the western to north-northeastern arc. A gap in that outer bank at the northwest may mark the original entrance, a detail that would have been a deliberate design feature rather than later deterioration. The site sits roughly 125 metres west of a watercourse that forms the townland boundary with Mountblakeney.

The monument is not signposted and sits within working farmland, so access would require landowner permission. The outline of the earthwork, traced by a growth of bushes around its perimeter, shows clearly on Digital Globe orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013, and on Google Earth imagery, making it straightforward to locate and orient before any visit. On the ground, the scarp and outer bank are most legible from the western to northern sides, and the possible entrance gap at the northwest is the detail most worth looking for once you have your bearings.