When workers began removing an older north-south road, documented on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1838, human bones began appearing in the exposed cutting face. They protruded haphazardly from the earth, a detail that suggested, to the National Museum of Ireland inspector who examined the site, that successive burials had disturbed earlier ones over time. The skeletons were unprotected, with no coffins, shrouds, or grave goods of any kind recorded, and they lay just below the old road surface, resting on undisturbed boulder clay. They extended for approximately twenty metres along the cutting face and to a depth of sixty centimetres.

What makes the site stranger still is a piece of local memory that surfaced during the inspection. A woman living nearby told the inspector that she recalled a tradition attached to the gardens of Lisnalurg House: the portions of the garden closest to the road were never dug, she said, and the reason given was simply "because of the bones." If that tradition reflected genuine knowledge passed down through generations, the cemetery may extend a further eight metres or more back from the road cutting, beneath ground that local people had quietly avoided for reasons they could name but not fully explain. Twelve metres beyond the apparent edge of the cemetery, the same cutting revealed a separate deposit: a large, roughly saucer-shaped feature filled with burnt stones, charcoal, and ash, measuring about four metres across. Whether it functioned as a hearth or an ash pit could not be determined, and no artefacts were found in association with it either. The date of the burials remains unknown. Today there is no surface trace of the burial ground whatsoever; the site is recorded by location alone.