The collision of two different eras of land management, one prehistoric, one agricultural, is visible in a single glance: a dry-stone wall standing 1.5 metres high and 0.65 metres wide running on a north-south axis across a space that predates it by well over a thousand years. It is the kind of pragmatic overwriting of the past that happened quietly across rural Ireland, and it gives the site an odd, layered quality.

The ringfort, a rath, is a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly 500 to 1000 AD, though some examples are earlier or later. They were built by farming families as a combination of homestead and enclosure for livestock, the surrounding bank offering a degree of security and marking out a household's territory. This example in Ballyrune sits on a break in an east-north-east-facing slope amid an area of rock outcrop, and the roughly circular enclosure measures 31.7 metres north to south and 32.3 metres east to west. Its boundary is defined partly by an earth-and-stone bank, best preserved along the south-east to south-south-west arc, and partly by a scarped edge, where the ground has been deliberately cut away to create a low vertical face rather than a built-up bank. The bank stands around 0.6 metres above the interior and 0.8 metres above the exterior ground level. The site was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the national record in August 2011.

The fort sits in pasture, which keeps the interior grassed over and means the earthworks are read through subtle changes in ground level rather than obvious stonework. The interior slopes gently down towards the south-east, and near the northern verge limestone bedrock breaks through the surface. That exposed rock, combined with the surrounding outcrop landscape, gives some indication of why this particular spot was chosen; elevated enough to have prospect, but with solid ground underfoot. The most legible section of the original bank is the south-east to south-south-west stretch, where the low but continuous rise of earth and stone is easiest to trace. The later field wall bisecting the enclosure is unmissable, though it takes a moment to register that it has been inserted into something much older.