Known locally as An Reilig or An Cheallúnach, the names themselves suggest sacred or ecclesiastical ground, "reilig" being the Irish word for a graveyard, often one associated with an early Christian site.

When Ordnance Survey investigators recorded the place in their name books, they described it as a circular area roughly three chains, or about sixty metres, across, with numerous old graves and headstones visible but the boundary of the site undefined. By the time of the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map, it was marked only as a "site of", indicating that even by that point the physical fabric had deteriorated significantly. A 1946 account recorded something more tangible: several cist graves, a form of burial in which the body is placed in a stone-lined box or chamber, still survived as mounds of stone enclosed by standing stones. That detail suggests a site with considerable antiquity, since cist burial was practised from the Bronze Age onwards and frequently became associated with later Christian enclosures in Ireland. A tradition recorded by the writer known as An Seabhac in 1939 holds that a church once stood here, and while no structural remains of any building survive, the combination of an enclosed burial ground, cist graves, and a church tradition is a pattern repeated at many early medieval sites across the west of Ireland.

Julia Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, which covers this part of the Dingle Peninsula, catalogued the site at a point when the standing stones and grave mounds were presumably still partially legible in the landscape. What remains now is largely a question for the ground itself.