That single discovery, quietly noted in the literature at the time, would eventually prove to be one corner of a much larger burial ground lying beneath the low sand ridge on which the demesne sits.

The 1944 grave was orientated east to west, a detail that points toward early Christian burial practice, in which the dead were laid with their heads to the west so that they would face east, towards the rising sun, at resurrection. It would be nearly two decades before the site gave up more of its secrets. In 1963 and 1964, seven further graves were uncovered, each containing the inhumed, meaning unburnt and intact, remains of adults, all following the same east-west alignment and all with the head placed at the western end. Stone-lined graves of this type, sometimes called cist graves in their earlier prehistoric form, were a common enough method of burial across early medieval Ireland, though the specifics of alignment and the consistency of the arrangement here suggest a deliberately ordered cemetery rather than isolated interments. The sand ridge setting is also notable; such naturally elevated, well-drained ground was frequently chosen for burial, both for practical reasons and, perhaps, for the sense of distinction it lent to the dead.