What had been assumed to be a rath, a type of circular earthwork enclosure commonly associated with early medieval settlement, turned out on closer inspection to be something far older and considerably stranger: a densely packed open-air cemetery, its dead laid out in orderly rows with no coffins, no stone-lined graves, and no grave goods of any kind.

The account comes from a writer named Graves, publishing in 1852 to 1853, who visited the site while quarrying was still active and recorded what the exposed sections revealed. The skeletons lay mostly oriented with their heads to the east and feet to the west, a pattern consistent with early Christian burial practice, though the absence of any ornaments or weapons made dating difficult. A pit feature on the north face of the excavation added another layer of complexity: roughly five feet deep and ten to twelve feet across, it was outlined by a distinct band of charcoal, calcined bone, and clinker or slag, suggesting an earlier phase of activity involving fire. Graves sent some of the bones to a Dr. Crane for examination; Crane concluded that most had come from individuals who, judging by their teeth, were around fifty years of age at death. A few fragments appeared to belong to a sheep. The earthwork itself, though described locally as a rath, was more likely a barrow, a burial mound, given what the quarrying revealed of its interior. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1839 marks a quarry of roughly 85 metres in diameter at the highest point of the north-south ridge that dominates the townland, with a lime kiln, a small structure used for burning limestone to produce agricultural lime, immediately to the south. That spot, now long since disturbed, is almost certainly where the cemetery once lay.