The graveyard of St Mary's parish church sits at the south-east angle of the junction, a roughly square plot measuring around 70 metres by 78 metres, enclosed within what was once a walled medieval town. It is the kind of place that traffic passes daily without quite registering what it is: an ancient burial ground planted at the civic centre rather than tucked away at the margins, as graveyards so often are.

The church with which the graveyard is associated was founded in the thirteenth century by William Marshall, who died in 1219. Marshall was one of the most powerful Anglo-Norman magnates in Ireland, and his patronage of ecclesiastical foundations across Leinster was considerable. The streets flanking the site have changed their names over time, Green Street having formerly been called South Street and Mill Street having been East Street, small linguistic traces of the town's long evolution within its medieval layout. The graveyard's dimensions and its position at the crossroads suggest it was a deliberate and prominent feature of the town's original plan rather than something that grew incrementally around the edges of settlement.