Its likely purpose was to give the occupants of Dunganstown House direct access to the burial ground, a private passage between the living and the dead that quietly reflects the social arrangements of the post-Restoration period in rural Ireland.

According to Liam Price, writing in 1967, a new church was built near Dunganstown House in the latter part of the seventeenth century, probably around 1670. The graveyard, sub-rectangular in shape and measuring roughly 64 metres by 92 metres, is enclosed by a stone wall with a main entrance gate to the south-east and that second, smaller gate to the east. The relationship between the burial ground and the house suggests the kind of private or semi-private ecclesiastical arrangement that was not unusual among landowning families in this era, when proximity to one's own church and graveyard carried considerable social as well as spiritual significance. Among the most tangible survivals here are a number of early eighteenth-century graveslabs. Several remain in their original positions in the western half of the graveyard, while others have been relocated and now rest against the northern wall, presumably moved at some point to protect or consolidate them.