It sits in undulating pastureland above the Ballinure River, worn down to a maximum height of barely half a metre, its earthen walls spread to about two and a half metres wide. Yet the shape it traces, roughly 46 metres from north to south and 30 metres east to west, is the outline of an enclosure that predates, and was partially consumed by, the very church that now stands beside it.

Enclosures of this kind are a recurring feature of the Irish archaeological landscape, oval or roughly circular banks of earth that once defined a bounded space, sometimes domestic, sometimes ceremonial, sometimes associated with early ecclesiastical settlement. What makes this particular example at Templepark quietly telling is the relationship between the enclosure and the later church to its immediate south-east. The church, along with a small adjoining enclosure, has been built directly over the earlier bank, destroying it from the east round to the south-south-east. The earlier feature was simply absorbed, its arc interrupted and partially erased by whatever came after. A series of associated earthworks nearby adds further texture to the site, suggesting this was not a single isolated feature but part of a broader pattern of activity on the ridge. The sequence, an older enclosure overlaid by a Christian building, is not uncommon in Ireland, where early monasteries and churches frequently occupied sites that had already accumulated significance over generations.