The graveyard itself is enclosed by a post-1700 stone wall, a relatively recent structure in the scheme of things, yet it surrounds ground where a church once stood that clearly predates that boundary by a considerable margin. The enclosure is roughly rectangular, measuring approximately 32 metres north to south and 47 metres east to west, and the wall that defines it is not uniformly straight. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, produced in the nineteenth century, shows a curving boundary running from the north-east round to the south-south-east, with a straight field boundary making up the remainder. That irregularity in the outline is often a clue that an enclosure is older in origin than its present stonework suggests.

When the Ordnance Survey visited in 1840, their field notes recorded that the ruins of Fanningstown Church lay on the north side of the graveyard. The church itself is catalogued separately in the record, but by that point it was already in ruins, reduced to whatever remained visible to a surveyor passing through Smallcounty Barony in County Limerick. The oldest legible memorial in the graveyard belongs to Denis Hogan, who died in 1785, as documented by O'Kelly in 1943. That date gives a lower boundary for the readable record, though the ground was almost certainly in use well before any surviving stone was carved and set upright.

The site sits within the townland of Fanningstown in County Limerick. Visitors approaching the graveyard should expect a working rural environment rather than a managed heritage site, so appropriate footwear and attention to surrounding land access is advisable. The church ruins on the north side are worth locating specifically, as they represent the older structural layer of the site. The curving line of the boundary wall, best appreciated by walking the perimeter, gives a sense of how an earlier enclosure, possibly of ecclesiastical origin, was later reinforced with the straight fieldstone walling typical of post-medieval land management in the region.