They are formed into the approximate shape of a cross, nothing more, and their presence among the more elaborate stonework of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries raises a quiet question about how long people have been burying their dead on this particular patch of elevated ground in County Mayo.

The graveyard occupies an irregular, L-shaped area immediately south of the friary church, roughly seventy metres north to south and up to eighty-one metres east to west at its widest point. Its western edge is defined by a steep scarp that falls away to the entrance avenue of the abbey below. The northern portion sits on relatively level ground, but the southern third slopes sharply downward, giving the site an uneven, tiered quality that hints at something beneath the surface. Writing in 1911, a historian named Knox suggested that the graveyard may overlie or incorporate earthworks that pre-date the friary itself, meaning the ground here could have held significance before the Augustinian friars ever arrived. Ledgers, the flat stone slabs laid horizontally over burial plots rather than set upright, survive in the eastern part of the graveyard, alongside plots enclosed by low concrete surrounds and occasional metal railings, each layer of burial custom sitting alongside the next across several centuries.

The graveyard is grass-covered with gravel paths running through it, and the density of graves is considerable. The uninscribed cross-shaped markers are easy to overlook amid the more legible stonework around them, but they are worth pausing over, small and unassuming reminders that the record of who lies here does not begin and end with what can be read.