In the middle of open, level pasture in County Kildare, a low oval mound rises about one and a half metres above the surrounding fields. It is only a modest elevation, but it marks a boundary between the everyday landscape and something considerably older. Enclosed within a modern wall, the raised ground holds a round tower, the remains of a Roman Catholic chapel site, a nineteenth-century church, and a graveyard whose true extent is not obvious to the eye.

The site is associated with an early monastery thought to have been founded by St Tua, a figure whose name survives in the placename Taghadoe. The round tower, that distinctively Irish form of tall, tapering stone tower built beside early medieval monasteries and used variously as a bell tower, landmark, and place of refuge, still stands here among the later ecclesiastical remains. Visible headstones cluster towards the south-east corner of the enclosure, which might suggest the burials are confined to that area. Geophysical survey, however, indicates that interments extend across the full oval area, and may even continue beneath the floor of the nineteenth-century church. The graveyard, in other words, is considerably larger than its surface appearance suggests, with most of those buried here leaving no trace that can be seen above ground.