They did not begin their existence as decorative wall features; they were almost certainly the label stops of a moulded arch over the doorway or a window of a medieval church, the ruins of which still occupy the northern sector of the burial ground. Somewhere along the line, as the church fell into ruin and the enclosing wall was rebuilt in a more modern form, these fragments were gathered up and mortared into the new stonework on the exterior face, where they now look out over the surrounding pastureland at roughly eye level rather than overhead where they once belonged.

The graveyard itself is a roughly subrectangular enclosure, measuring approximately 53 metres north to south and 41 metres east to west. Despite the presence of a medieval church within it, the earliest datable burials on the site appear to be from the twentieth century, which gives the place an unusual character: the oldest standing fabric is medieval, yet the burial ground as a functioning space is relatively recent. Alongside the main graveyard there is also an associated children's burial ground, known in Irish tradition as a cillín, a category of site where unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground were interred, often quietly and without formal religious ceremony. In addition to the two stone heads, the sillstone of one of the church's windows has also been preserved in the enclosing wall, making the wall itself an informal repository of the church's architectural remains.