Graveyards in settlements this size often hold centuries of local history within a compact space, with headstones ranging from roughly cut eighteenth-century slabs to Victorian marble, and occasional older features, such as the remnants of a medieval church or enclosing wall, that point to a much longer history of use on the same ground.

Goleen as a settlement developed around its small harbour and the fishing and farming life of the Mizen, and like many parishes in this part of Munster it would have had a pattern of religious use stretching back well before the formal Catholic and Church of Ireland structures of the post-Reformation period. Rural graveyards in Cork frequently occupy sites that were in use from early Christian times, sometimes marked by a ruined nave or a simple stone enclosure known as a cashel. Whether that applies here, and what specific features the Goleen graveyard contains, remains a matter for closer local investigation.