What appears above the surface gives little away, but beneath the soil, archaeologists found the traces of a ditch that once curved around this site, suggesting it was once set apart in the deliberate, formal way that early Christian communities marked sacred ground.

An ecclesiastical enclosure is essentially a defined perimeter, often a curving ditch or bank, that early medieval church communities used to delineate consecrated space from the world outside it. Such enclosures are found across Ireland and are frequently the earliest surviving evidence of organised religious activity at a site, predating any standing stonework by centuries. At Camaghy, archaeological testing carried out under licence 05E1374 revealed two sections of ditch at separate points around the graveyard. One section, found roughly fifteen metres south-east of the graveyard wall and running parallel with it, measured 1.6 metres across at the top and reached a depth of 0.8 metres, with silty clay at its base overlaid by a silty sand containing charcoal. A second feature, located to the north-east, was slightly wider at 1.9 metres across, though marginally shallower at 0.6 metres deep. Mc Loughlin's 2006 report on the excavation noted that these two sections may be parts of the same continuous feature, together forming an enclosure centred on the graveyard. No objects were recovered from the ditch fills, but iron slag turned up across much of the tested area, a detail that raises quiet questions about the range of activity that once took place here. The site itself sits on a slight rise, with redeposited soils also identified near a stream some seventy metres north-east of the present church.