A ringfort, or rath, is a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and was the typical farmstead of early medieval Ireland, occupied broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation. This one does not, or barely does.

According to local information, the site was levelled around 1950, its banks spread and its ditches filled in to make the land more workable for agriculture. The timing is not unusual; the mid-twentieth century saw significant losses of earthwork monuments across Ireland as mechanised farming made it easier and more economical to clear features that had survived for well over a thousand years simply because they were awkward to plough around. What remains at Ballynaraha is a slight rise in the ground, the kind of gentle irregularity that a passing walker might not register at all, but which represents the compressed memory of the original earthwork beneath the soil.