A local tradition records that burials once took place along this stretch of shore, in ground that lies outside the formal bounds of the churchyard itself. Shoreline burials of this kind are not unheard of in Ireland, and they often reflect older practices that predate the tidying of sacred space into walled enclosures, or else they mark the graves of those who, for one reason or another, could not be interred in consecrated ground.

The church at Killaspugbrone is itself one of the older ecclesiastical sites in County Sligo, its name preserving a reference to a bishop, "Brone" or Bronus, associated with the early Christian period in this part of Connacht. The tradition of burials to the north of the church and along the shore has been noted by local historian Martin Timoney, whose knowledge of the Sligo landscape has documented many such details that might otherwise go unrecorded. North-facing ground beside a church carries its own set of associations in Irish and wider European practice; the northern side was historically considered less favourable, and was sometimes used for the unbaptised, strangers, or those outside the community's formal rites.