The tower draws most of the attention, but the burial ground around the ruined church repays a slower look. Among its twenty-nine tombs and sixteen named headstones, the earliest inscription dates to 1770, and scattered around the southern and eastern edges are forty-five unhewn gravemarkers, raw and unlettered, their occupants unrecorded.

The site takes its name from the Irish An Ráth Thuaidh, meaning the northern fort, and the ecclesiastical complex here is designated National Monument No. 55. Its origins lie in the early medieval period, when Rattoo functioned as part of a wider monastic settlement. The ruined parish church and graveyard are what remain most visibly of that layered occupation, enclosed now by a high uncoursed rubble stone wall that reaches a maximum height of 1.4 metres along its western, northern, and eastern boundaries. Most of the tombs are of the haunched strong-box or gabled type, a form of above-ground chest tomb once common across Munster, and the majority have been repaired and repointed at some point. Two tombs sit within the church walls themselves.

Entry to the graveyard is through an iron gate set beneath a stone arch, though the gate was noted as being in poor condition when a survey was carried out in 2012. Beside it stands a modern galvanised swing-stile. The Office of Public Works has also constructed a separate entrance specifically to give access to the round tower. The site sits on genuinely open ground, with unobstructed views in every direction, which makes the scale of the tower all the more striking when you arrive and begin to notice what surrounds it.