Scattered across the southern half are rows of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century headstones, the earliest among them carrying a date of 1723, while more recent burials occupy the ground to the north. Interspersed throughout are low, uninscribed markers, plain stones set flush or nearly flush with the earth, marking graves whose occupants left no name behind.

At the northern end of the enclosure stand the ruins of Matehy parish church, the roofless shell around which the whole site is arranged. The church itself may point to a much older institutional presence. A fourteenth-century document records a vicarage of the Hospitallers in the area, a reference to the Knights Hospitaller, the medieval religious and military order that held properties across Ireland and managed parishes in connection with their commanderies. Whether this graveyard and church formed part of that holding has never been firmly established, but the possibility lends the site an unexpected dimension. Further complicating the picture is a local tradition, recorded by Hartnett in 1939, that connects Gilcagh with another graveyard at Loughane West nearby, a link whose precise meaning remains unclear but which suggests some shared memory or historical relationship between the two sites.