Sand-pits have a way of surfacing the unexpected, and the one at Kennycourt in County Kildare proved no exception. At some point around the turn of the twentieth century, workers digging there turned up flagstones, a skull, and human bones scattered roughly six feet apart. Rather than leave them exposed, someone had the bones reburied on the spot, an act of improvised care that preserved them, imperfectly, for the decades ahead.

In 1935, the researcher Price investigated a report of the find and located those reburied remains. They belonged to an adult male and had been left in a heap, with no accompanying grave goods to hint at date or status. Price also uncovered a stone cist nearby, a box-like grave formed from upright slabs and possibly originally covered by a lintel stone across the top. It measured roughly 2.4 metres east to west and just over 0.75 metres wide, dimensions consistent with a single inhumation burial. The bones inside were badly broken and had been disturbed at some earlier point, making close analysis impossible. What could be read from the undisturbed leg and foot bones suggested the original occupant had been laid on their back, head oriented to the west, which is a posture associated with early Christian burial practice in Ireland, though without datable finds it is impossible to be certain of the period. Price was also told that at least five other skulls had previously come out of the same sand-pit, suggesting the area had once served as a more substantial burial ground, the full extent of which remains unknown. By 1972, no surface traces of any kind were visible at the site.