When the antiquarian T. J. Westropp examined and described the structure in 1904 and 1905, he was able to record the building's dimensions in some detail, noting walls three feet thick and a footprint of roughly 71 feet 8 inches by 21 feet 8 inches, proportions typical of the long, narrow plan favoured by the mendicant orders. The Dominicans, a preaching order founded in the thirteenth century, generally built in this austere, functional style, and the Ballynegaule friary appears to have followed that tradition closely.

The house was founded by a member of the Roche family at some point during the fourteenth century, and it remained in use up to the Reformation period. The last prior on record was one Donough O'Dorgan, noted as holding that position in 1558, which places the effective end of the community squarely in the era of the dissolution of the monasteries in Ireland. By 1657, a Civil Survey entry was already describing the site in the past tense, recording both a "Spitle in Kilfinan" with the walls of a church or chapel, and "Abby Ballynegaule" with the walls of an old abbey. Westropp's later account adds architectural detail: the west door and two south doorways carried flat arches, the east window had a round-headed splay arch, and several of the south and north windows retained round-arched lights and splays, though the glazing itself had been gone since before 1840.

The site sits within the broader landscape of Abbey, County Limerick, and the ruins, though reduced, were still in what Westropp considered fair preservation at the time of his survey. Visitors approaching the area should expect a modest remnant rather than a grand set of standing walls; the value here lies in the legibility of the plan and the survival of carved stonework details in the doorways and window openings. The flat-arched doorways in particular are worth examining closely, as they represent a less common feature in Irish friary architecture of this period. The surrounding townland names, including the reference to Kilfinan, help orient anyone trying to locate the precise position of the ruins on the ground.