The remains are modest, a low bank of earth and stone tracing roughly half the circuit from east through south to west, with a natural scarp completing the enclosure on the remaining arc. The whole thing measures about 29.6 metres in diameter, a figure that places it firmly within the range of the enclosed farmsteads built across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries.

This type of monument is known as a rath, a ringfort defined by earthen banks rather than stone walls. Raths were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as the fortified homestead of a single farming family. The enclosing bank would originally have been topped with a timber palisade, and the interior would have held a house or houses, ancillary structures, and perhaps a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage used for storage or refuge. At Ballynew, the earthwork has worn down considerably over the centuries, and the western portion of the circuit is now expressed more as a change in ground level than a proper bank, which is what archaeologists mean when they describe the enclosing element as a scarp. What remains is a subtle but readable feature, an impression in the land rather than an obvious monument.