Measuring approximately 26 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, it sits overgrown and irregular against whatever surrounds it, its untouched state a quiet signal that local people, across generations, understood something particular about this ground. That understanding is recorded simply and without elaboration: it is, according to local information, a "place for burials long ago".

The phrase carries more weight than it might first appear. Unrecorded and unconsecrated burial grounds of this kind are not unusual in the Irish countryside, though they are easy to overlook or misread. Some were used for unbaptised children, historically excluded from church graveyards, and are known as cillíní. Others preserve the memory of earlier, pre-Christian burial practices, or of periods of crisis when formal burial was impossible or inaccessible. Which of these, if any, applies at Shanavally is not known. What is clear is that the ground has been respected, kept unbroken, while the land around it was worked. That act of collective restraint, repeated season after season by people who may never have known exactly who was buried there or when, is itself a kind of record.