Box tombs of this kind, essentially a raised stone chest placed over a burial, were a favoured form of commemorating wealthy families in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Bullen example sits alongside two or three other large built-up tombs in the rectangular enclosure, including one associated with the De Courceys. The graveyard, roughly 70 metres by 60 metres and still in active use, is enclosed by a stone wall on the north side of the road, with the estuary visible to the north.

The De Courcey connection gives the site a particular historical weight. The De Courceys were Lords Kinsale, a title bound up with one of the oldest baronies in Ireland, and their presence here reflects the deep Anglo-Norman footprint in this part of south Cork. Near the northern end of the graveyard stand the ruins of a Church of Ireland building, itself erected on the site of the ancient parish church of Ringrone, a medieval parish whose origins predate the Norman period. The oldest surviving headstones in the graveyard date from the late eighteenth century, though the site clearly carries layers of use reaching back considerably further. The layering here is typical of Irish burial grounds that absorbed older ecclesiastical sites: the medieval parish, the later Protestant church built on its foundations, and the continuing use of the ground across denominations and centuries.