What looks like an ordinary boundary enclosure around a rural burial ground is thought to incorporate the remains of a cashel, a type of early medieval ringfort built from stone rather than the earthen banks more commonly associated with such enclosures. The cashel originally surrounded a church on the same site, and the two structures, religious and defensive, once formed a single enclosed complex of the kind that was not unusual in early Christian Ireland.

The connection between the cashel and the later graveyard wall was proposed by Ua Riain in 1940, who suggested that the medieval stonework had been absorbed into, and effectively recycled as, the modern boundary. It is a reminder of how frequently Irish ecclesiastical sites were built in layers, each generation repurposing what came before rather than clearing it away. Harold Leask, whose foundational work on Irish churches and monasteries noted this site in 1950, was among the first to systematically document such relationships between early church remains and their enclosing structures. The church itself predates the graveyard as a formal institution, though the ground around it has likely held burials for centuries.