The ground around it was once defined by a large circular enclosure, the kind of boundary that in Ireland often signals early ecclesiastical or ceremonial origins, but that enclosure has since been levelled entirely. The burial ground alone persists, sitting in pasture on an east-facing slope as though nothing unusual ever surrounded it.

When the Ordnance Survey produced its six-inch maps in 1842, the site was clearly marked as a grave yard and shown occupying the eastern quadrant of the circular enclosure that then still existed, or at least remained traceable on the ground. That pairing, a burial ground positioned within a defined circular boundary, is a pattern familiar from early medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites, where a curved enclosing wall or bank, known as a cashel or rath depending on its construction, would demarcate sacred or settled ground. The enclosure at Garranes is now gone, but the burial ground it once contained remains as a subrectangular area roughly 25 metres long and 20 metres wide, enclosed by a low stone wall standing about 0.6 metres high. A number of grave markers are still visible within it.