The eastern edge of the original burial ground coincides exactly with the boundary between Newcastle and Castletroy, a detail that hints at how deeply embedded these enclosures were in the organisation of the medieval and early modern landscape. Lines drawn around the dead had a way of outlining the living world too.

The site carries at least two distinct periods within it. Beneath the nineteenth-century Church of Ireland building that occupies the western quadrant of the graveyard lies the footprint of a medieval church, recorded in the Sites and Monuments Record as LI005-026001. The graveyard itself, as surveyed for the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840, formed a roughly rectangular enclosure running approximately 52 metres north to south and 68 metres east to west. Its perimeter wall dates to after 1700, and the original entrance gate was positioned on the western side. At some point after that survey was made, the burial ground was extended eastward, pushing the active graveyard beyond the old boundary while the historic core remained intact to the west around the church.

The site sits in Newcastle, a townland close to Castletroy on the eastern fringes of Limerick city. Visitors approaching from the east should be aware that the modern graveyard extends beyond the historic boundary, so the older, more historically dense portion clusters around the Church of Ireland building in the western section. The post-1700 enclosure wall is worth examining as you move through the space; it marks the limits of the graveyard as it existed for well over a century before the eastward expansion. Because the medieval church beneath the current structure is not visible above ground, the interest here lies in reading the landscape itself, noting the relationship between the wall, the church position, and the townland line that bisects the site on the map if not obviously on the ground.