The effect is quietly isolating. No enclosure was needed to the east, south, or west; the wet ground did that work. Only a field fence marks the northern edge, and most of the grave markers that survive are clustered towards the eastern half of the interior, as though the community that used the ground had particular reasons for favouring that drier corner.

The site was recorded as 'Gortnakilly Grave Yd.' on the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1842, which confirms it was a recognised place of burial well into the nineteenth century. The plot is roughly subrectangular, measuring approximately fifteen metres east to west and just over twelve metres north to south, making it a modest space by any measure. Burial grounds of this kind, often found on marginal land away from parish churches, were sometimes used for unbaptised children, for those who died outside the formal structures of the Church, or simply by communities whose nearest consecrated ground was inconveniently far. The marsh boundary at Gortnakilly gives the place a quality common to such sites: a sense of having been set aside rather than formally established, occupying the kind of ground that nobody else particularly wanted.