This is not a churchyard tucked beside a road or sheltered by a village; it is a hilltop burial ground reached by a farm trackway from the south-west, with the surrounding landscape spread out in every direction. The combination of the elevated position, the ruined church at its centre, and the quiet accumulation of centuries of burial gives the place an atmosphere that is difficult to account for simply by listing its parts.

The enclosure measures roughly 57 metres east to west and 58 metres north to south, making it an almost square plot, which is itself a little unusual for a site of this age and type. At its centre stand the fragmentary remains of St Patrick's Church, a ruin that gives the hill its name, Knockpatrick deriving from the Irish for Patrick's hill. The interior is densely filled with grave plots, the majority of the headstones dating from the nineteenth century, with a smaller number from the twentieth and a scattering of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century burial vaults positioned to the east and west of the church ruin. An oblique aerial photograph taken on 17 July 1968 as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography records the church and graveyard clearly on the hilltop, and in the same image a ringfort is visible to the north of the enclosure, a reminder that this elevated ground was significant long before any Christian association. A ringfort is a circular enclosure, typically from the early medieval period, used as a farmstead or place of local defence. More recently, an altar has been constructed against the inside face of the enclosing wall on the north side, suggesting the site continues to hold some devotional significance for the local community.

The approach is via a farm trackway from the south-west, so visitors should expect an agricultural setting and dress accordingly, particularly after wet weather. The area to the north of the church ruin is notably less crowded with grave plots than the rest of the interior, making it the clearest vantage point for taking in the enclosure as a whole. The ringfort to the north of the graveyard is worth looking for once you have oriented yourself; from the summit, the relationship between the two sites becomes immediately legible in the landscape.