What sets Ballyryan apart is the quiet accumulation of fragments embedded within it, the kind of material detail that suggests a much longer history than the headstones alone would indicate. Two pieces of medieval architectural stonework, believed to be remnants of a nearby medieval church, sit in the northern quadrant of the enclosure. Alongside them, half of a small red sandstone conglomerate quern stone, a hand-operated grinding stone used for processing grain, lies visible in the graveyard, its presence unexplained but suggestive of earlier, domestic life on or near this ground.

The graveyard measures roughly 52 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, enclosed by a wall of rubble sandstone standing about a metre high. The Ordnance Survey letters compiled by O'Flanagan in 1930 record that it once contained several ash and other trees of considerable age, implying a well-established and long-tended space. None of those trees survive today. The medieval architectural fragments connect the site to a church recorded separately in the area, and the combination of those fragments, the quern stone, and the aged trees described in the historical record points to a place that was in continuous use, in one form or another, for several centuries. A Roman Catholic church now stands to the north of the graveyard, continuing that association between this ground and organised religious life.