It is easy to miss, and most visitors probably do. But that slight swelling in the earth is likely the trace of an earlier graveyard boundary, hinting that the dead have been gathered here across several distinct phases of history, each generation building its enclosure within or around the one before.

The site sits on a low ridge at the eastern end of an upland river valley, looking out over steep ground to the east and north, with Freneystown Castle visible on higher ground some 545 metres to the southeast. The Church of Ireland building that now occupies the northern part of the graveyard is nineteenth-century in construction, but it was built on and around a medieval church, absorbing the earlier structure into its fabric. A graveslab found approximately twenty metres west of the church's west gable dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and its presence is taken as an indicator that the medieval church itself belongs to the same period. The wider complex is not isolated in its antiquity either: an early medieval church and graveyard lie just 85 metres to the east, suggesting that this corner of Kilkenny was a place of religious activity long before the Norman period. Most of the visible memorials in the graveyard date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and are concentrated in the western section.

One detail that quietly rewards attention is the southern stretch of the graveyard wall, where St. Scoheen's Well has been incorporated directly into the masonry. A holy well absorbed into a boundary wall is an unusual arrangement, one that suggests the well held enough local significance that those who built the enclosure chose to preserve it rather than simply build over it. The name St. Scoheen is obscure, and no wider record of the saint appears to survive in the immediate landscape, which gives the well a faintly enigmatic quality within an already layered site.