Sites like this, known in Irish as cillíní (singular cillín), were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants and others considered ineligible for consecrated ground. They tend to occupy liminal spaces, field edges, old ringforts, or exposed hillsides, places that sat at the margins of the community both physically and spiritually. This one at Cathair Samháin is no different in that regard, though its setting, open to the valley below and heavily reclaimed by vegetation, gives it a particular quality of quiet remoteness.

The site survives as a roughly rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 20 metres along its longer axis and just under 13 metres across. Numerous grave-markers are scattered across its uneven surface, their arrangement apparently without fixed order, which is typical of these informal burial places where the keeping of records was neither expected nor practised. In the south-western sector, four stone slabs define one side of a low rectangular mound, measuring around 6 metres by 2 metres and standing about half a metre high. The function of this mound is not entirely clear from what remains visible, but the delineating slabs suggest it was deliberately constructed rather than simply accumulated over time. The site was documented as part of the archaeological survey of South Kerry compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996.