Human remains came to light during construction, along with fragments of swords and a jet ring, suggesting that whatever lay beneath was not simply an ordinary parish cemetery. The church was built west of Evora Bridge, a location Fr. Shearman identified as the site of a great battle, which gives the sword fragments a particular weight. A jet ring is a small but striking object; jet, a dense black stone sometimes carved into jewellery, was used across early medieval Ireland and beyond, and its presence alongside martial debris hints at a burial assemblage of some significance.

Fr. Shearman, writing in 1922, drew on earlier accounts to piece together the significance of the site, noting that St Mary's itself was raised on the foundations of a still earlier church. That layering, one Christian building over another over what may be a much older use of the ground, is common enough in Ireland, but the battle association at Evora Bridge adds a dimension that reaches beyond ordinary ecclesiastical continuity. The sword fragments recovered during the 1866 works were never fully investigated in their original context, and much of what they might have told us was lost in the process of construction.

More recently, monitoring work carried out in 2003 under licence number 03E0935, when a new gas supply was being inserted to the north of the church, produced fresh evidence. A slot trench running approximately 55 metres along higher ground within the church grounds revealed at least three in-situ human burials, as well as disarticulated remains, meaning bones that had been disturbed and were no longer in their original anatomical positions, found at a depth of around half a metre. No excavation of these burials was undertaken at the time. The remains were noted and left in place, which means that a significant, and still largely unexamined, assemblage almost certainly lies beneath the church grounds today.