According to well-attested historical accounts, it was here, in December 1641, that eighteen Scots settlers were hanged, an episode that sits within the wider catastrophe of the 1641 rebellion, when violence against planters erupted across Ulster. That such an event is thought to have taken place within a churchyard, a space normally understood as offering sanctuary, lends the site a particular unease.

The graveyard itself encloses the medieval parish church of Clones within an oval perimeter of masonry walls, measuring roughly 55 metres on its longest axis. A subrectangular extension off to the south-west, established before 1835 according to the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of that period, suggests the burial ground grew to meet demand over the centuries. A datestone is built into the inside of the perimeter wall at the south-east, and headstone inscriptions going back to 1730 have been documented and recorded. The site lies roughly 300 metres north of the location associated with the monastery of St Tigearnach, an early Christian foundation closely linked to the ecclesiastical history of Clones, and looks out south-eastward over the town's Diamond. When a section of the northern graveyard wall, some 18 metres long and standing up to 4 metres in height, was reconstructed in 2008, monitoring of the work found graveyard soil to a depth of between 1.4 and 1.8 metres. No archaeological features or artefacts emerged, but disarticulated human remains disturbed during the work were carefully re-buried within the graveyard, a quiet reminder of how densely layered such ground can be.