What survives instead is a collection of early eighteenth-century headstones, two of which carry the earliest known examples of particular decorative motifs recorded anywhere in the historic barony of Imokilly, the stretch of east Cork running between the Blackwater estuary and Cork Harbour.

The two stones in question were noted by the researcher O'Shea in 1988. A headstone dated 1724 bears what is identified as the earliest recorded heart motif in Imokilly, and another from 1733 carries a whirls design, again the oldest of its kind in the area. These carved symbols were common in Irish funerary art of the period, used by local masons who developed regional vocabularies of ornament, and their earliest appearances at a given site can help trace the spread of particular workshops or traditions across a landscape. The graveyard, roughly sixty metres across and still in occasional use, sits on a hilltop approached by a lane from the north, a setting that suggests an earlier, pre-Norman pattern of enclosed burial ground on elevated ground. Below the grass, or at least below any visible trace, lies the footprint of Kilmacdonagh parish church. It appeared as a rectangular structure on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, but by later editions of the same mapping it was already marked only as a site. The church was already in ruins by 1615, according to a nineteenth-century source, meaning it had been derelict for well over two centuries before cartographers first formally recorded its outline.

The laneway approach from the north is the practical route in, and the graveyard itself remains an active burial place, so the usual courtesies apply. The two significant headstones are early enough that weathering is a factor, but the decorative carving on stones of this period, when legible, tends to be bold enough to read even in flat light.