Cresset stones are medieval artefacts, their small carved depressions designed to hold oil or fat that could be lit, functioning as rudimentary lamps or possibly as votive lights in a religious context. This one sits quietly among the graves, an odd and easily overlooked relic from a church that no longer exists in any visible form above ground.

The parish church of Clongeen was still a functioning building in 1615, when Thomas Ram, the Protestant bishop of Ferns, conducted a formal visitation of his diocese. His records note that a curate named Robert Dreighan was in post, and that both the church and its chancel were in reasonable repair. Somewhere in the two centuries that followed, the building disappeared entirely. By around 1840, when the scholar John O'Donovan passed through and made his observations, he could find no trace of the old church at all. The raised rectangular graveyard, roughly 60 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south, enclosed by masonry walls, is what remained as a legible boundary. Archaeological testing in the surrounding area has since revealed that the site was once far busier than its current quiet appearance suggests: features were identified to the north of the graveyard, along with a burnt mound, and to the south, on the other side of the small stream that runs nearby, investigators found traces of a field system and what may have been a mill-race, the channel that would have directed water to power a mill. Around 350 metres to the north-west lies St Edan's Well, a holy well associated with the same local ecclesiastical tradition, adding to a picture of a place that was, for centuries, a genuine centre of community life.