The site at Gort Na Scairte is still in active use, which means the very old and the relatively recent share the same ground, and the transition between them is not always obvious. Many of the grave markers are low, plain, and carry no inscription at all, rows of stones that record a presence without offering a name.

The graveyard's original L-shape, documented on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, was later extended southward to create the rectangular enclosure that stands today, bounded by a stone wall. Headstones with legible dates appear from the 1790s onward, but the site is considerably older than that. Within the enclosure are the ruins of a church, and beneath or alongside the ground lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically used for storage or concealment. The combination of a church, a souterrain, and a hilltop position points toward a history that stretches well back before any of the surviving inscriptions.