That physical rise, modest but unmistakable, tells a story no headstone could: the dead have been layered here long enough to alter the landscape. Among the 19th- and 20th-century inscribed headstones, simple uninscribed stone markers survive, anonymous and unreadable, belonging to an older habit of commemoration that predates the fashion for carved text.

The graveyard encloses a concentration of medieval remains that makes it unusual even by Irish standards. A round tower still stands within the walls; round towers were built from roughly the 9th century onwards, serving as bell towers and places of refuge for monastic communities. Alongside it are the remains of a medieval church and a bullaun stone, a large rock with one or more cup-shaped hollows, which in Irish tradition was often associated with healing or cursing, depending on the ritual. At the south-eastern end of the graveyard lies a feature called Labba Patrick, or Patrick's Bed, a penitential station that served as the traditional starting point of a pattern. A pattern, from the Irish word "patron", was an annual devotional gathering held on a saint's feast day, combining formal prayers with more communal, sometimes raucous, activity. The route from Labba Patrick extended beyond the graveyard walls to visit two holy wells nearby, one just outside the north-western wall and a second roughly seven metres further to the north-north-west.