The settlement of Jerpointchurch, a small rural townland, takes its name from the earlier church that predates the abbey itself, and the graveyard attached to it has continued to receive burials across many centuries, accumulating the kind of sedimentary human record that formal monastic sites rarely preserve in the same way.

The area around Jerpoint was a significant ecclesiastical centre well before the Cistercians arrived in the twelfth century. A pre-Norman church community is thought to have existed at this location, and the founding of Jerpoint Abbey around 1160, initially as a Benedictine house before its adoption into the Cistercian order, drew the spiritual and administrative life of the region toward the abbey. Yet the older church site persisted alongside it, and the graveyard continued in use by the local population. The nearby medieval village of Newtown Jerpoint, largely abandoned by the later medieval period, adds further texture to the landscape, a place where the physical remains of daily life, parish religion, and monastic power sit unusually close together.

The graveyard itself is accessible from the road through the townland, situated in low, quiet farmland that retains little of the foot traffic directed toward Jerpoint Abbey a short distance away. Visitors who do make their way here will find a mix of grave markers spanning different periods, some worn to near-illegibility, alongside the remnants of the old church structure. The combination of the ruined church, the continuing burial ground, and the proximity to both the abbey and the earthworks of the deserted medieval village makes this a place worth approaching slowly and on foot.