The tower, standing at the western boundary, is not beside the enclosure so much as part of it, folded into the masonry as though the wall-builders found it already there and simply worked around it. Round towers are a familiar feature of early Irish ecclesiastical sites, free-standing structures associated with monastic settlements, used variously as bell towers, places of refuge, and markers of prestige. Finding one pressed into service as a graveyard boundary is a quieter, stranger thing.

The site sits on a south-facing slope and carries several centuries of overlapping religious use. The original church here was dedicated to St Tigearnach, an early medieval saint, and the area later became home to an Augustinian abbey dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, whose cloister and church may also have occupied this ground. The current graveyard is an oval space, roughly 80 metres east to west and 40 to 45 metres north to south, enclosed by masonry walls and containing a stone shrine within the southern perimeter. A separate, smaller graveyard lies approximately 40 metres to the north-east, arranged around a Romanesque church, and there is evidence that the two were once part of a single, larger sacred enclosure. Burials recovered in the ground between them support this reading. Romanesque architecture in Ireland generally dates from the twelfth century, characterised by decorative carved stonework and rounded arches, and its presence here suggests a site of some significance during that period. Headstone inscriptions in both graveyards were recorded and published by Mulligan and McMahon in 1984; the stones date from around 1725 in each location, running to approximately 1850 in the Romanesque church area and continuing to around 1900 in the main graveyard.