Rather than the familiar rough circle or rectangle of most rural Irish churchyards, this one is distinctly D-shaped, its straight northern edge formed not by a wall or a fence but by a natural scarp dropping away to a small stream below. The earthen bank that defines the remaining arc runs from the north-east, around the south, and back to the north-west, enclosing the site in a way that reads almost like a collaboration between human intention and local topography.

The parish church of Kiltennell sits within this enclosure, roughly forty metres east to west and thirty-six metres north to south. The stream running west to east lies about sixty metres to the north, and the sea shore is only around three hundred and fifty metres away, which gives the site a quietly exposed quality, perched at the edge of a slope with water on two sides in a loose sense. Earthen-banked enclosures of this kind are a recurring feature of early Irish ecclesiastical sites, where a raised or bounded precinct marked off sacred ground from the surrounding landscape. The natural scarp here would have served the same boundary function as a constructed bank, making the stream valley itself part of the enclosure's logic.