The curve of that wall may preserve the outline of something considerably older, a ghost of an early ecclesiastical enclosure folded quietly into the landscape.

Ecclesiastical enclosures are the roughly circular or oval boundaries that defined early Irish monastic and church sites, often dating to the early medieval period. They are sometimes described as the fingerprints of early Christianity in Ireland, and they frequently survive not as visible earthworks but as subtle curves in later field boundaries, roads, or, as here, graveyard walls. In 1988, the researcher D.L. Swan identified Ballycahillroe as a possible example of this pattern, noting that the arc of the graveyard's boundary wall appeared to reflect the line of an earlier enclosure beneath or behind it. The associated graveyard has its own separate record, suggesting that this corner of Westmeath has layers of use stretching back well beyond what is immediately visible.