A south-facing slope in County Kildare, long given over to tillage, revealed something unexpected in 1958 when agricultural work turned up a human skeleton. That single discovery set in motion a chain of events that would eventually expose a small but remarkably complete early cemetery, one that might otherwise have remained entirely unknown beneath the ploughed soil.

The full excavation came about not out of immediate urgency but because of road-building. In advance of the proposed Kilcullen Link Motorway Scheme to the west of the site, an archaeological dig directed by Keeley uncovered a cemetery of sixteen inhumation burials, meaning bodies interred in the ground rather than cremated. Twelve were fully articulated, three only partially represented, and one identified from skull fragments alone. Among the dead were two children, along with both male and female adults. Each body had been laid in a simple shallow pit cut directly into the sand, at depths of between 0.3 and 0.6 metres. The predominant orientation was east to west, with the head positioned at the western end, a pattern associated with early Christian burial practice in Ireland, though some graves were aligned more towards the north-east and south-west. What makes the site particularly interesting is the variation in how the bodies were treated: some were surrounded by an outline of stones, and occasionally a thin layer of charcoal was placed between the skeleton and that stone surround, suggesting a degree of ritual attention that went beyond the purely functional. A small oval hearth, roughly 0.75 metres long and 0.6 metres wide, was found to the north of the burials, filled with gravel, ash, and charcoal-rich soil. Around 65 metres to the south-east, excavators also identified a penannular enclosure, a roughly circular ditched or banked feature with a deliberate gap or opening in its circumference, a form commonly associated with early medieval activity in Ireland. The relationship between the enclosure and the cemetery is not spelled out, but their proximity is unlikely to be coincidental.