Look at it carefully and something older begins to show through: the boundary is polygonal rather than the neat rectangle of a modern burial ground, the ditch curves noticeably to the south-west and south, and the ground itself rises towards the southern end, where the ruins of a church sit at the highest point. That elevated, roughly circular portion is the clue. What the present graveyard may be doing, without anyone necessarily intending it, is preserving the outline of a far earlier sacred space.

The possibility was first formally noted by Leo Swan in 1988, who observed that the polygonal form of the graveyard boundary, combined with the curving boundary ditch, pointed towards an earlier ecclesiastical enclosure beneath or behind the current layout. An ecclesiastical enclosure, in Early Christian Ireland, was typically a roughly circular or oval boundary, often defined by a bank and ditch, that marked off a monastic or church site as sacred ground. The idea had already been floated decades earlier: in 1940, Oliver Davies recorded during an Irish Tourist Association survey that the oldest and highest part of the graveyard appeared to be circular, and suggested it might represent an earlier burial ground or churchyard. Traces of an enclosing fosse, a ditch dug as part of that original boundary, along with an external bank, are considered most visible along the western to northern side of the site.

For anyone visiting, the geometry of the place rewards a slow circuit of the perimeter. The curvature of the southern boundary and the way the ground rises towards the church ruins give a clearer sense of what lies beneath the present arrangement than any single fixed viewpoint. The fosse and external bank to the west and north are subtle rather than dramatic, the kind of earthwork that resolves into meaning only once you know what you are looking at.