Most historic burial grounds of this shape are not simply old churchyards: their circularity is thought to betray a much earlier origin, indicating that a Christian community may have inherited and enclosed a pre-existing sacred or settlement site. At Kilmactalway, the medieval parish church sits at the highest point within this circular enclosure, a positioning that would have been deliberate, projecting authority over the surrounding farmland that still surrounds the site today.

What archaeologists refer to as an ecclesiastical enclosure is essentially the bounded precinct of an early Irish monastic or church settlement, typically defined by an earthen bank or a wall, and often curving in plan rather than following the straight lines of later formal boundaries. At Kilmactalway, the enclosing wall has a bank revetted, meaning supported and faced, against its inner side, a construction technique that points to an earthwork origin later reinforced or replaced in stone. The site has been recorded and compiled by archaeologist Geraldine Stout, and carries the monument numbers DU021-003001 for the church and DU021-003002 for the enclosing graveyard, placing it firmly within the national archaeological record even if it rarely features in broader discussions of Dublin's medieval landscape.

The site is set among farmland, which means the approach is quiet and the surroundings largely unchanged in character, if not in detail, from what they would have been for much of its history. The circular wall and the slight internal bank are the details worth looking for on arrival; they are easy to overlook if you are focused on the church ruin itself, but they are in many ways the more telling feature, encoding within their shape a history that the standing stonework alone cannot convey. Visiting outside the growing season, when surrounding vegetation is lower, gives the clearest sense of the enclosure's form and its relationship to the elevated ground at its centre.