The village stood on an elevated, flat spot at the eastern edge of the central coastal plain. It overlooked a broad hilly area that was bounded on the north and south by two tributaries of Wadi al-Sarar that passed the village some 1.5 km to the southwest. A secondary road of about 1.5 km linked the village to a highway that connected Gaza with the Ramla-Jerusalem highway. Both Edward Robinson, an American biblical scholar who traveled in Palestine in the nineteenth century, and the surveyors who carried out research for the Survey of Western Palestine in the 1870s, describe the site during their visits as an abandoned village with modern walls and foundations. 
Khirbat Bayt Far was laid out in a circular pattern. Its houses were built of cement and mud, clustered together and separated by narrow alleys. Its entire population was Muslim. The majority of villagers worked in animal husbandry and rainfed agriculture, cultivating vegetables and fruits and using parts of their lands as pastures. In 1944/45 a total of 5,337 dunums was allocated to cereals; 19 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. A khirba that carried the village's name lay next to it, which suggests that the site had a long history of habitation.
