Yet at Kilmasantan, on a west-facing slope above the River Dodder in Glenasmole, that is precisely what waits. The graveyard itself is a modest sub-rectangular enclosure, roughly 57 metres by 37 metres, bounded by a stone wall built sometime after 1700 and entered through an eastern gate. Inside, alongside the ruins of a church, the font sits quietly to the north of the entrance, a liturgical basin carved in stone and used historically for baptism, now simply weathering in the Dublin Mountains air.

The site has roots that reach back at least to 1179, when documentary evidence places Kilmasantan church and its surrounding lands as a sub-manor of Tallaght, absorbed into the extensive ecclesiastical holdings of the See of Dublin, the archdiocese centred on the city. According to the research of Nolan (1992), this manor controlled the upper eastern Dodder Valley, making it a significant piece in the medieval management of church lands across what is now County Dublin. More intriguing still is the possibility, recorded in the archaeological survey compiled by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy, that a monastic enclosure once adjoined the northern side of the graveyard. An ecclesiastical enclosure is typically a defined boundary, often circular or curvilinear, marking the precinct of an early Christian monastery, and the traces here suggest that Kilmasantan may have begun as something considerably older and more substantial than its present remains indicate.

Glenasmole, the valley of the thrushes, sits in the Dublin Mountains south-west of the city and is accessible by road from Tallaght. The graveyard lies in the townland of Glassavullaun on the eastern bank of the Dodder, set into rising ground in a way that gives it a quiet, slightly elevated aspect looking westward over the river. Visitors should enter through the eastern gate and take a moment to look north for the font, which is easy to pass by. The possible monastic enclosure adjoining to the north is not dramatically visible, so it rewards a slow and attentive look at the ground rather than any single obvious feature.