It is a small, easily overlooked detail, but it hints at the long human traffic that has passed through this place, and at how practical the rituals of burial once were in rural Ireland.

The graveyard surrounds Templemaley church and is an unusual shape for a burial ground, roughly triangular, running about 110 metres along its straight southern edge and curving for around 100 metres on the other sides, with a pointed apex to the north. A double-faced masonry wall encloses most of it; the southern boundary is marked instead by an iron railing. Inside, the monuments range from chest tombs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, those raised rectangular stone boxes that once signalled a family's means and piety, to plain headstones that carry no inscription at all. Two crudely carved stones have been tentatively identified as early crosses, though their origins remain uncertain. The graveyard is still in active use, and when archaeologist Graham Hull carried out testing in 2009 ahead of a planned extension, the ground gave up nothing in the way of related archaeological material, leaving the longer history of the site quietly unresolved.

The two possible early crosses are easy to miss, their carving rough and weathered, quite different from the more finished chest tombs nearby. Looking at the contrast between the two groups of monuments, separated by centuries of changing fashions in commemoration, gives a reasonable sense of how long this corner of County Clare has been set aside from ordinary life.