That gentle arc in the landscape is easy to overlook, but to those familiar with Early Christian Ireland, the curve of a boundary like this is a recognisable signature.

Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosures were the defining spatial feature of early medieval Irish religious settlements, typically circular or oval plots of ground that demarcated sacred space from the secular world beyond. They were established from roughly the fifth century onwards and often survived in the landscape long after the original timber or stone structures within them had disappeared entirely. What endures, if anything does, is the shape: a curving field edge, a subtly raised bank, or a graveyard boundary that refuses to run straight. At Churchtown, the southern boundary of the existing graveyard appears to preserve just such a curve, suggesting that the present burial ground may overlie or adjoin the footprint of an earlier ecclesiastical foundation. The observation was first noted by Leo Swan in 1988, a researcher who made a particular study of early medieval enclosures across Ireland and whose work brought many of these quiet landscape traces to wider attention.