Part of Burrough Hill Country Park and open to the public, the hillfort is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

According to archaeologist Dr Jeremy Taylor "sites like Burrough Hill were the nearest thing we have to a town before places like Leicester ever existed".

[1] The hillfort stands on an ironstone promontory around 660 feet (200 m) above sea level, 7 miles (11 km) south of the modern settlement of Melton Mowbray.

The design, with an extended gatepassage and an adjacent room, has parallels with hillforts to the north such as Eddisbury in Cheshire and The Wrekin in Shropshire.

[2] A magnetometry survey of the interior of the hillfort in 2010 revealed over 400 circular anomalies of uncertain purpose (maculae) distributed across the fort, although there were fewer around the south-east.

[12] In the medieval period, the interior of the hillfort along with the surrounding area was farmed; traces of ridge and furrow still mark where the fields were ploughed.

[2] In his Itinerary, Leland noted that curiosity prompted him to excavate some of the earthworks near the entrance and his account may be regarded as the earliest archaeological field report.

[2] The first professional archaeological excavation on Burrough Hill was in 1935; it was not well recorded, and the exact location of the trench is not certain, but it covered some 360 square feet (33 m2) and was somewhere outside the east of the hillfort.

Several features identified through this geophysical survey were partially excavated; they turned out to be storage pits and produced artefacts such as animal bones, quern stones for grinding, and various shards of Iron Age and Roman pottery.

The 1960 survey again guided the excavations of 1970 and 1971 when several trenches totalling an area of 680 square feet (63 m2) were dug in the interior near the rampart on the north side of the site.

[15] The 86 acres (35 ha) country park containing the hillfort has been leased by the Ernest Cook Trust, who own the site, to Leicestershire County Council since 1970.

[15] According to Dr Patrick Clay research in the 1990s and 2000s on farmsteads and undefended settlements had revealed much about Iron Age Leicestershire, however the role of hillforts in the county was less clear.

[15] The hillfort is a Scheduled Monument,[4] which means it is a "nationally important" structure and archaeological site which has been given protection against unauthorised change.

These finds contrast sharply with artefacts found on other contemporary sites such as small farmsteads, suggesting differences in status and access to a wider range of material culture.