The ground at Kilmalooda was marked simply as 'Kill Grave Yd.' on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, and in its understatement that label captures something of the place's character. A low, narrow mound sits in the southeastern part of the enclosure, its stones still visible at the surface, hinting at what lies beneath without quite giving it up.

The burial ground occupies the southern quadrant of an early ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or subcircular boundary that in Ireland typically marks the footprint of an early medieval monastic or church settlement. These enclosures, often established between the sixth and twelfth centuries, frequently survived long after their founding communities had gone, preserved in field boundaries or simply in the memory of the ground itself. The burial area here is a subcircular plot measuring roughly 28 metres northeast to southwest and 10 metres northwest to southeast. The mound in its southeastern corner is small, just four metres long, thirty centimetres wide, and forty centimetres high, but the exposed stones on its surface suggest a deliberate structure underneath. That suggestion became certainty in 1981, when topsoil clearance at the edge of the burial ground revealed a stone-lined grave. The grave is a type known from early Christian contexts across Ireland, where slabs are set on edge to form a coffin-like enclosure directly in the earth. It was uncovered, noted, and then immediately filled back in.