What sets it apart is the shape of that boundary. The enclosure is not rectangular, as post-medieval churchyards tend to be, but subcircular, curving in segments in a way that has led researchers to suspect something considerably older lies behind it.

The site sits on the northern end of a north-south ridge above Lough Owel in County Westmeath, with two ringforts, the circular earthwork enclosures associated with early medieval settlement, lying within 70 metres of it on either side. That clustering is suggestive. In 1988, a researcher named Swan noted that the segmental form of the graveyard boundary was consistent with an Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of curvilinear sacred precinct that Irish monasteries and early church foundations were typically laid out within from roughly the 6th century onwards. The physical evidence, however, is ambiguous. When the site was examined in 1980, no earthworks were visible, and closer inspection of the surviving bank and wall revealed that the earthen bank actually sits on top of the stone wall rather than predating it. That relationship suggests the two elements are broadly contemporary with each other, and the stonework itself has a post-1700 appearance. So what looks from above like an ancient curved boundary may in fact be a later construction that followed, or was influenced by, an earlier line now largely invisible at ground level. The ruins of the church stand at the centre of this ambiguity, neither confirming nor resolving it.