The current enclosure is roughly trapezoidal, but embedded within its eastern half, sitting in a slight hollow and still defined by its original boulder wall, is the footprint of an earlier subcircular burial ground. That earlier shape, with its rounded edges and modest dimensions, is the kind of form typically associated with early Christian monastic enclosures, and the site may indeed preserve the remains of an original hermitage.

The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838 recorded the older, subcircular graveyard as a distinct feature, with St Mathias's Chapel sitting just outside its western boundary. By the time the map was resurveyed in 1898 to 1899, both the chapel and the original burial ground had been absorbed into the larger trapezoidal enclosure that exists today, roughly 80 metres by 77 metres. Inside, the two phases of the site are still legible. The southern half of the older area contains the densest burials, with neat stone-lined graves and upright headstones arranged in east-west rows, the standard Christian orientation. A leacht and a cross-inscribed pillar are visible at the south-east. A leacht is a low commemorative cairn or altar-like structure associated with early Irish religious practice, often marking a venerated person or a station on a devotional circuit. A low boulder wall divides the graveyard, and the northern section drops roughly a metre and a half below the southern, with fewer graves visible and those of recent date. The physical difference in level, along with the difference in grave density, quietly maps the long history of the place without any need for signage or explanation.