That unevenness is not neglect or decay; it is the original solution to an engineering problem. Because the ground slopes away to the north, the builders had to pile the bank higher in some sections simply to keep the enclosed interior level and defensible. The result is a structure that looks different from almost every angle.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the tenth century. A rath consists of a circular or near-circular area defined by one or more earthen banks, and would have enclosed a farmstead or the home of a local family of some standing. The Beal example measures approximately 28 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west internally, making it a fairly typical size for a single-banked example. The bank itself varies in width at its base from three to five metres, and its external height above the surrounding land reaches around 1.5 metres, while the drop on the interior side is somewhat less, between 0.6 and 1.2 metres. One detail that complicates the picture is the southern side, which has been absorbed into a later field boundary. That kind of gradual incorporation into agricultural landscape is common across Ireland, as farmers over the centuries found it easier to adapt old earthworks into new field systems than to remove them entirely, leaving the original form partially legible and partially dissolved into the working land around it.