Locally it is known as a lisheen, a diminutive of the Irish word for a fort or enclosure, though the term came to be applied widely across Ireland to these informal children's cemeteries. The ground here is unenclosed, with no wall or ditch to define its edge, and the stones that indicate individual graves are randomly placed rather than arranged in any formal order, giving the site a quietly disorganised quality that sets it apart from a conventional churchyard.

The burial ground occupies a subrectangular area roughly 25 metres on its longer axis and 12 metres across, situated immediately to the south-west of a holy well. That proximity is not incidental. Unbaptised children were excluded from consecrated ground under Catholic Church practice, and families turned instead to liminal spaces, places already considered sacred or otherworldly outside the formal church structure. Holy wells, ancient earthworks, and old boundaries were all favoured locations. At Knocklawrence, local tradition holds that burials here continued until around 1950, which is relatively late and points to how persistent this practice remained in rural Ireland well into the twentieth century, long after it had faded elsewhere.