At Templeoran in County Westmeath, the low wall enclosing the post-1700 burial ground traces a shape that has nothing to do with post-1700 thinking. It curves in an almost perfect circle, and that curve is old, far older than any of the graves it now contains.

In early medieval Ireland, monastic and ecclesiastical settlements were commonly enclosed within a roughly circular boundary, a form sometimes called a cashel if built in stone or a rath-type enclosure if earthen. The circle was not incidental; it demarcated sacred from secular space and defined the legal and spiritual territory of a religious community. At Templeoran, researcher Leo Swan noted in 1988 that the graveyard boundary around the ruined church appeared to preserve the line of exactly such an enclosure from the Early Christian period. There are no surviving earthworks in the surrounding fields to confirm this, and the ground offers nothing obvious to the casual eye. What does confirm the shape is aerial photography: Cambridge University's aerial survey unit captured the circular plan clearly in photographs taken in 1971, showing from above what is nearly invisible from ground level.