The enclosure's shape is the clue. Oval or curvilinear ecclesiastical enclosures are a characteristic feature of Early Christian Ireland, typically marking out sacred ground around a church or monastic foundation, often long before any surviving stonework was raised. Here, the curve of the land itself may be preserving the memory of that original boundary.

The ivy-covered ruins of a medieval church occupy the northern part of the graveyard, and a post-medieval stone wall, now poorly preserved, defines much of the perimeter from the western arc around through the north and east. On the southern side, however, the wall has been removed, and a modern cemetery extension together with a new access road have cut into the earlier enclosure, causing partial destruction of the boundary. What does survive on the south is a semi-circular scarp, a low earthen edge in the ground, and it is this feature that researcher Swan, writing in 1988, identified as possibly tracing the line of a much earlier Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure beneath the post-medieval layout. The graveyard itself contains memorials from the eighteenth century onwards, layered over a site whose origins may stretch back well over a millennium.