That discrepancy matters: the interior bank stands just over a metre tall, but the exterior face climbs to four, a disproportion that gives a reasonable sense of how imposing these structures were meant to appear from outside.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries and thought to have served as a defended farmstead for a family of some local standing. The Ballea example is roughly circular, measuring about 46.7 metres north to south and 37.7 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank reinforced with stone facing on its inner eastern side. Beyond the bank runs an external fosse, a rock-cut or dug ditch, roughly two metres deep, running from the north-east around to the south-west. Entry was from the south through a gap 3.4 metres wide, with a causeway bridging the fosse to allow passage across. A laneway still skirts the outer bank from the south-west around to the north-west, a detail that hints at continued use of the landscape around the site long after the rath itself fell out of occupation. The position on a ridge overlooking the river valley would have given whoever lived here a clear view of the surrounding terrain, a consideration that was probably as practical as it was deliberate.