It cannot be reached, cannot be properly examined, and its boundaries may already have been cut through by a laneway constructed along its western edge. What survives is less a place than a problem, a site whose existence is better documented on paper than on the ground.

The burial ground's older identity is preserved in the name recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, where it appears as 'Kildoo'. The 'Kil' element derives from the Irish 'cill', meaning a cell or church, and names of this type typically mark early Christian ecclesiastical enclosures, often modest in scale, associated with a local saint or a small monastic community. The 'doo' element likely reflects the Irish 'dubh', meaning black or dark. These kil-place-names are scattered across Cork and the wider country, and they frequently turn out to preserve the only surviving trace of a religious site that has long since disappeared from the visible landscape. At Bawnishall, even that trace is now under threat.