The graveyard at Ballyvalloo measures roughly 35 metres east to west and 23 metres north to south, its boundary formed by a masonry wall, and the sea is only about 300 metres to the south-east. That combination, a deliberately elevated ecclesiastical site set just back from the shore, is typical of early Christian foundations in Ireland, where a modest natural prominence was enough to mark out sacred ground from the surrounding low-lying terrain.

Within the enclosure stands the parish church of Ballyvalloo parish, the raised and oval form of the graveyard itself likely indicating considerable age, since this shape is associated with pre-Norman ecclesiastical enclosures across Ireland. About 100 metres to the east there was once a holy well dedicated to St Peter, a type of site that frequently accompanied early church foundations and served as a focus for local devotion and pattern days, informal gatherings of prayer and communal celebration held on a saint's feast day. The precise location of St Peter's Well is no longer known, which lends the immediate surroundings a quietly unresolved quality; the landscape holds a feature that has simply been misplaced by time.