The cloister and nave, originally the preserve of Augustinian canons going about their daily liturgical routines, have long since been repurposed as a graveyard, turning the interior of one of medieval Ireland's largest priories into a place where headstones crowd among the remnants of carved stonework and roofless walls.

Athassel was founded in the late twelfth century and grew into an exceptionally extensive monastic complex, its footprint sprawling along the banks of the River Suir. The decision, at some point after the abbey fell into ruin, to use the cloister garth and the nave of the church for burials was not unusual in an Irish context. Communities frequently continued to inter their dead within the shells of dissolved or abandoned monasteries, treating the consecrated ground as still valid and the standing walls as a kind of enclosure. What makes Athassel particularly striking is the scale of the original structure into which the graves have been absorbed. The cloister, the covered walkway forming a square around a central open garth, and the nave, the main body of the church where the lay community would have gathered for worship, represent two of the most significant spaces in any monastic plan, and both here serve a purpose their builders would not have anticipated.