The place is known in Irish as Baile na hEaglaise, meaning townland of the church, and that name carries more weight than the unremarkable modern entrance from the south might suggest. It is still in use as a burial ground, which means the living and the very old dead share the same ground here without much ceremony about the distinction.

The enclosure is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 44 metres north to south and 57.5 metres east to west, and is defined by a bank of earth and stone averaging four metres at its base and rising between 1.7 and 2.4 metres on its outer face. Ecclesiastical enclosures of this type, typically associated with early medieval Irish monasticism, were used to define sacred space around a church and its ancillary buildings. Here, the church itself survives only as a site, and beneath the ground is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the kind frequently found in early medieval contexts, sometimes used for storage and sometimes for refuge. The bank is partly overgrown with trees and scrub, and its stone facing, visible in places both inside and out, appears to be of relatively modern construction rather than original fabric. Among the modern tombs and headstones inside the enclosure stand numerous uninscribed upright slabs, their silence on the subject of who they mark giving the interior an oddly layered quality. Most striking is a single slab in the south-eastern quadrant, set on edge and bearing on its eastern face a circular depression 35 centimetres in diameter and 15 centimetres deep, its purpose unrecorded. The whole site looks south across Kenmare Bay towards the Beara Peninsula, a view that has changed rather less than anything within the enclosure walls.