They carry no name, no date, no indication of who lies beneath. A few of them have holes through the stone, a feature found at various early Irish burial sites and thought to have been connected with ritual touching or the passing of offerings. That detail alone places this quiet graveyard in a broader, older current of practice than its modest appearance might suggest.

The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 under the name "Killeen Stouke Grave Yard", a killeen being a small burial ground traditionally associated with unbaptised children or with pre-Christian use, though the term was applied loosely. Within the rectangular stone-walled enclosure lie the ruins of what O'Donoghue, writing in 1986, identified as the first parish church of Schull, making this the original ecclesiastical centre of a parish that would later shift its focus to the town of Schull itself. The graveyard is still in active use, meaning the very old and the relatively recent lie together within the same walls. Perhaps most striking is the record that rounds were performed here on St. John's night. Rounds, or "turas" in Irish, were a form of ritual circumambulation, walking a set circuit around a sacred site a prescribed number of times while reciting prayers, often performed at significant points in the liturgical or seasonal calendar. St. John's night falls on the 23rd of June, the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist, which also coincides closely with midsummer, a period already freighted with pre-Christian significance across northern Europe.