The earthen bank that once defined this oval enclosure measures roughly 22 metres across its longer north-to-south axis and just under 16 metres east to west, dimensions typical of the smaller domestic raths that were once scattered across the Irish countryside in their tens of thousands.

A rath, or ringfort, is essentially a circular or oval area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead or settlement during the Early Medieval period, roughly between 500 and 1000 AD. This particular example is univallate, meaning it has only a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings sometimes seen at higher-status sites. At Ballynorig, that bank is around five metres wide and still rises some 1.2 metres on its outer face, dropping to about 0.8 metres on the interior. The northern arc through to the southern side preserves the clearest trace of the original circuit; the rest has been considerably disrupted. The disturbance here is not ancient but modern, the result of dumping that has obscured what would otherwise be a reasonably intact earthwork in the Kerry landscape.