The surrounding field has been ploughed right up to the base of the bank, which gives the structure an oddly isolated quality, a raised island of long grass in the middle of worked agricultural land. That contrast between the cultivated and the preserved is, in itself, a kind of accidental record of how these sites have persisted across centuries of farming.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside. Ringforts were enclosed farmsteads, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth century, built by farming families to protect livestock and household from wolves and rival clans. The bank at Ballyvaloon retains a formal entrance, 5 metres wide, facing south-south-east, and there are further gaps in the bank to the north, west-south-west, and north-north-west, though it is not always easy to distinguish original features from later disturbance. An aerial photograph taken in September 1991 showed the bank had already been partially levelled in places, a reminder that even well-preserved examples are not immune to the cumulative pressures of tillage over generations.