The rivers form a natural boundary to the north, east, and south of what was once a vast monastic enclosure, one that researchers estimate extended at least 400 metres from east to west. The western perimeter, by contrast, has left no clear trace at all, which means the full extent of the early medieval settlement here remains genuinely unresolved.

What visitors walk through today is a large quadrangular enclosure, roughly 100 metres east to west and 110 metres north to south, defined by a modern wall and a stony bank. This inner area contains the cathedral, the round tower, and the graveyard itself. A round tower, for those unfamiliar with early Irish monasticism, is a tall, freestanding stone structure associated with ecclesiastical settlements, thought to have served as bell towers and places of refuge. The enclosure wall may itself be superimposed on an older inner boundary, a detail that hints at layers of construction and reorganisation stretching back well before any surviving masonry. Entry to the enclosure comes through a two-arched gatehouse positioned at the north-east, sitting on the line of the earlier outer enclosure. An internal wall division, running off the south side of the entrance, cuts the graveyard so that its northern third is separated from the rest, a subdivision whose original purpose is not entirely clear.

The gatehouse is one of the more quietly unusual features to look for on arrival. Walking through it, you are following a threshold that has been in use, in one form or another, since the early medieval period. The wall division inside the graveyard is easy to walk past without registering, but pausing to notice it raises questions about how this space was organised and who, or what, was kept apart from whom.