Set on a gentle rise amid low-lying land, with higher ground pressing in from the west, the burial ground at Mollaneen contains, within its subrectangular boundary wall, the remains of a Romanesque church and a round tower. That combination, a church built in the ornate Irish Romanesque style of the twelfth century alongside one of Ireland's distinctive early medieval towers, tall, tapered, and freestanding, sits in the northern portion of a graveyard measuring roughly 62 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west, enclosed by a masonry wall rising to about 1.4 metres in places.

The site belongs to the complex associated with Dysert O'Dea, a place with deep connections to early Irish monasticism. The round tower, a form of structure built from roughly the ninth to the twelfth centuries and understood to have served as both bell tower and place of refuge, still stands alongside the Romanesque church, which features the richly carved arches characteristic of that style. Approximately 100 metres to the east lies the high cross of St Tola, a figure associated with the founding of the Dysert O'Dea monastery. High crosses, typically elaborately carved free-standing stone monuments, were central features of major Irish ecclesiastical settlements, and their presence near a burial ground generally signals a site of considerable antiquity and local importance. The graveyard itself, still defined by its enclosing wall, continues the long tradition of burial on ground that has been considered sacred for well over a millennium.