Its shape is one of the first clues that something older lies beneath the surface. Circular enclosures of this kind are frequently associated with early medieval ecclesiastical sites in Ireland, where the curved boundary echoes the form of much earlier religious settlements. The southern arc of the enclosure has been cut into by the road itself, and a stone wall now marks where the boundary once continued; the remainder is defined by a stone-faced earthen bank, a type of boundary that belongs to a much longer tradition than the gravestones within.

The site carries several layers of history in a small compass. It occupies the location of the ancient parish church of Dunderrow, and a Church of Ireland building was erected here in 1812 to replace it. That later structure was described by Samuel Lewis in 1837 as a small handsome edifice with a lofty square tower, but nothing of it survives above ground today. The trajectory from use to ruin was swift: a diocesan report of 1810 had already judged the church then standing on the site as unsafe and not capable of receiving such repairs as may be safe and permanent, and the 1812 building was presumably itself eventually abandoned. Of the 55 inscribed headstones recorded here, the earliest dates from 1730. Older still is a Roche chest tomb, a large box-shaped grave monument, which carries the date 1665 on one of its side panels, predating the headstone tradition on the site by several decades. The church had been in repair as recently as 1639, according to one nineteenth-century source, which makes the speed of its subsequent decline all the more striking.