The name alone signals something out of the ordinary. This was not a general city graveyard but a carefully negotiated enclosure, roughly 45 metres long and no wider than about 11 metres, set aside specifically for members of Dublin's Huguenot community; the French Protestant refugees who had fled persecution on the Continent and found themselves building new lives in Ireland.

The ground itself had an earlier identity. It formed part of a larger plot known as the Cabbage Garden, so called because of what had been grown there before it was repurposed for burial. The Dean and Chapter of St Patrick's Cathedral had already leased this land for use as a graveyard, and in 1681 the Churchwardens received it back for that purpose at a rent of twelve pence a year. In 1685, the local Huguenot community petitioned the Archbishop of Dublin to consecrate a separate portion of the Cabbage Garden for their own use. The Archbishop agreed, allotting them the strip on condition that they enclose it with a stone or brick wall, fit it with a decent gate, and maintain everything in good repair. His one complication was a concern about the lease: he would not consecrate the ground without a formal deed from the Dean and Chapter guaranteeing that the land would not be alienated. The Chapter agreed, and the deed was drawn up accordingly. The Huguenots buried there were members of the congregation that worshipped in the Lady Chapel of St Patrick's Cathedral, a community that had made a permanent, if quiet, mark on Dublin life.

The burial ground appears clearly on John Rocque's 1756 map of Dublin, labelled 'French Burying Ground' and shown as a narrow L-shaped plot accessed from the south side of Kevin Street Upper via what was then called Cabbage Garden Lane. By 1847, the Ordnance Survey six-inch map names it simply 'French Grave Yard'. The site is recorded in the Dublin Record of Monuments and Places. Cathedral Lane, which preserves the route of the old lane, is the approach on foot today. The ground ceased to be used for burial in 1858, and what remains is a quiet, easily overlooked corner of the city where the particular history of a displaced community is compressed into a very small area of ground.