The site at Derryvella is easy to overlook on the ground, but aerial photographs taken in the 1960s reveal a complex of concentric enclosures that tell a far older and more layered story than the graveyard itself might suggest.

The nineteenth-century scholar John O'Donovan linked the site to Doire Meille, a monastery attributed to St Tigernach, whose feast day falls on the 4th of November. For some time it was also proposed, by Gwynn and Hadcock writing in 1988, as the location of the Early Christian monastery of Daire Mór, associated with Bishop Colman. More recent scholarship, however, has placed Daire Mór at Longfordpass North in North Tipperary rather than Derryvella, leaving the precise identity of this site still somewhat open. What is not in doubt is the physical complexity of the monument itself. At its outermost edge is a large circular ecclesiastical enclosure, an earth and stone bank enclosing an area roughly 150 metres across, with a shallow fosse, a ditch running around the outside, and a probable entrance gap on the western side. Within this sits a smaller sub-enclosure defined by a scarp, a low step in the ground, positioned immediately to the south-east of the ruined church. Most intriguingly, on the south-western to western arc of that inner zone, there is evidence of a fosse running on the inside of its bank rather than the outside, which is the reverse of the usual Early Christian arrangement. This inward-facing fosse is considered a possible indicator that part of the enclosure has prehistoric origins, predating the Christian use of the site entirely.

The monument is heavily overgrown and the earthworks are difficult to read at ground level. The clearest impression of the concentric layout comes not from walking the site but from those mid-twentieth-century aerial photographs, which capture the geometry of the enclosures before the scrub closed in further. The bog surrounding the rise on three sides has helped preserve the earthworks from agricultural disturbance, even as it has made the site feel quietly remote.