What makes it worth pausing over is the combination of earthwork and stonework in the one structure: the bank is earthen for most of its circuit, but its inner face to the north-east is stone-lined, suggesting either a deliberate variation in construction or later reinforcement at a point that needed it.

Raths, sometimes called ringforts, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its associated outbuildings within a raised earthen bank and external ditch. The Barryshall example follows that pattern closely. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring 27.3 metres north to south and 28.8 metres east to west, dimensions consistent with a single-family agricultural site rather than anything of high status. The fosse, the external ditch that would originally have reinforced the bank's defensive effect, is still visible to the north-east, though it has largely silted up over the centuries. A gap of about 2 metres in the bank on the eastern side almost certainly marks the original entrance, east-facing entrances being a common feature of Irish ringforts, possibly for practical reasons related to light and prevailing weather, or perhaps carrying some cultural or ritual significance that is now difficult to recover.