Nobody recorded whose grave it marks or what the perforation was intended to signify. That quiet puzzle is typical of a site where the layers of use and reuse have accumulated over more than a millennium, producing a graveyard that is simultaneously a working burial ground, an architectural salvage yard, and an accidental archive. One tomb, for instance, partially covers the footprint of a round tower that no longer exists, while another contains a chamfered limestone block robbed from an earlier medieval structure. A piece of a 15th-century window mullion, painted white, stands propped inside the west entrance as though someone simply ran out of ideas about where else to put it.

The complex sits on the northern edge of Ardfert village, about eight kilometres north of Tralee, and its origins reach back to the early medieval period. The cathedral ruins span a chronology from the 11th to the 17th centuries, and two smaller churches survive alongside them: Templenahoe, dating to the 12th century, and the 15th-century Templenagriffin, which has been conserved and restored in recent years. The round tower, once 36 metres tall, collapsed in 1771; a handful of its basal stones remain in place, and others lie scattered nearby. The cathedral itself was fully excavated over a seven-year period by Fionnbarr Moore of the National Monuments Service, with conservation carried out by Grellan Rourke of the Office of Public Works. All human remains uncovered during that excavation were reinterred in the newer section of the graveyard to the east. Among the older graves, 27 horizontal graveslabs and a number of finely carved 18th and 19th-century headstones remain, sitting alongside burial markers so rough and anonymous that they have never borne any inscription at all.

Visitors entering through the west gate will find that white-painted mullion fragment almost immediately on their left. The old graveyard, which holds 80 of the site's 88 recorded tombs, including the raised, box-shaped forms typical of Irish funerary tradition, surrounds the cathedral ruins on most sides. The cathedral itself is now managed as a visitor centre, accessible directly from the road through the south transept. The newer graveyard to the east, where the excavated interments were reburied, is entered through a separate pair of iron gates, noticeably more rusted than their counterparts on the older side, with a squeeze-stile made from slate set beside the east limestone pier.