Workers at an elevated sandpit in the corner of a field, a few fields distant from the ruins of Kilscannell church and its associated churchyard, began turning up human bones lying just thirty to forty centimetres below the surface. The skeletons were in an advanced state of decomposition, and skulls of varying sizes, from adult down to small, came to light over the following months. What made the find stranger still was the arrangement of the graves: the bodies had been laid out on an east-west axis, heads to the west, with small stones placed at the feet in a rough line, forming what the original report called a sort of little wall. Two objects recovered from the site were sent away for examination, and their presence only deepened the puzzle.

The find was reported by Mr Robert Cussen of Newcastlewest and was later documented by Cahill and Sikora in their 2011 survey. Two artefacts had come up alongside the remains. G.A. Hayes-McCoy examined the iron object and concluded it was most probably a halberd blade, a weapon combining an axe blade and a spearhead on a long pole, widely used by soldiers and guards in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though Hayes-McCoy noted the identification was tentative. The second object was described by Catríona McCloud as a ginger fork, a type of handled table implement that came into use in the late seventeenth century and continued through the eighteenth. It retained its bone handle. The halberd blade was kept by the National Museum of Ireland. The report offered no clear account of how these objects related to the burials themselves. One skull was examined separately by a Mr D.M. Davies, who identified it as belonging to a woman aged between thirty-five and forty, noting a keeled skull shape, a high nasal bridge, a fine forehead, and large eye sockets.

The site lies to the south-east of Kilscannell church, whose ruins and associated churchyard are recorded monuments in County Limerick. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch sheet confirms a large quarry at the relevant location, which gives some sense of how extensive the disturbance may have been. There is no formal public access to the sandpit site, and the ground has long since been altered by quarrying activity. The church ruins and churchyard nearby are the more visible reference point for anyone trying to orientate themselves. The human remains themselves were never systematically excavated, and many questions, about who was buried there, why they lay outside the churchyard boundary, and what the weapons and cutlery signify, remain unanswered.