When a row of houses along the southern edge of the burial ground was demolished in the early nineteenth century, skeletal material was found projecting from the sides of the manure pits that had stood in front of them, right along the line of what is now a public road. The graveyard had, it seems, once extended considerably further than its present walls suggest.

The site predates the walled town of Kilkenny itself. The church of St Roc, or Rioc, a parish dedication that appears to be pre-Norman in origin, stood here before the town was formally founded, but had fallen into disuse and left no visible trace above ground by the nineteenth century. By 1623 the graveyard was significant enough to merit mention in a formal inquisition, and in 1633 one Edmond Grace paid the Corporation six shillings for a garden at its corner, recorded in documents as "St. Roch's churchyard." The enclosing wall visible today is a later addition; an inscription on one of the entrance gate piers reads "St. Rock's, 1828. Built by Public Subscription," confirming that the current boundary was only established then. A patron festival in honour of St Rioc was held here on the first Sunday in August each year until 1830, when it was discontinued by the Bishop of Ossory. Patron days were traditional communal gatherings at a saint's sacred site, combining religious observance with socialising and sometimes, to the clergy's frustration, rather less devotional activities.

Within the graveyard stands a sculpture to the Trinity. The oldest legible tombstone dates from 1757, but several of the headstones are not purpose-made grave markers at all; they appear to be reused architectural fragments, most likely salvaged from the vanished church itself. In that detail, the stones quietly preserve what the building no longer can.