The site on Long Island is modest in scale, roughly twelve metres north to south and six metres east to west, but its internal order is striking: three very regular rows of east-west grave-mounds, each raised about thirty centimetres above the surrounding ground, with upright stone slabs marking the ends of each row. A cluster of low, subcircular mounds lies adjacent to the main area. The tidiness of the layout, given the nature of the burial population, is quietly unexpected.

Places like this belong to a tradition found across Ireland known as cillíní, or killeens, informal burial grounds set apart from consecrated churchyards. Catholic doctrine historically excluded unbaptised infants from burial in blessed ground, and so communities designated separate, often liminal spaces, at boundaries, on islands, near ancient monuments, where these children could be laid to rest. The burial ground on Long Island sits east of a leacht, a type of low cairn or memorial mound associated with early Christian practice, which places this spot within a longer landscape of spiritual significance. What makes the Long Island site particularly notable is the recorded inclusion not only of children but also of what the Ordnance Survey Name Books describe as "adult strangers", people who died away from their home parishes and could not easily be returned to their own communities. In death as in life, the site gathered those without a clear local claim.