That is a considerable height for a monument of this kind, and it gives the enclosure a presence that the surrounding farmland does little to diminish. The near-circular interior, roughly thirty-one to thirty-two metres across, has been subtly engineered: the ground level on the south-western side has been raised to level out the natural hillslope, a detail that speaks to the practical intelligence behind what can look, from a distance, like a simple mound.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the fifth to the twelfth century. They were enclosed farmsteads rather than fortifications in any military sense, with the bank and its accompanying external ditch, or fosse, serving to keep livestock in and predators out as much as anything else. At Ballymacorcoran, the fosse runs from the north-east around to the west and is still discernible, though it has been filled with rubble along much of its southern arc. The inner face of the bank retains stone facing across much of its circuit, from the west around to the north-east, while on the north-eastern and southern sections field clearance material has been piled against the inner face over the years, a common enough fate for monuments that continued to serve as convenient dumping grounds long after their original purpose was forgotten. Two entrances survive: a narrower break to the north-east, about two and a half metres wide, with traces of a causeway crossing the fosse, and a wider gap to the west at roughly four and a half metres. A septic tank installation to the east-south-east has truncated the fosse at that point, a reminder that even well-preserved monuments are rarely entirely untouched by later life.