What makes the site quietly arresting is the way its perimeter changes character as you move around it: a substantial earth and stone bank on the east and south sides, standing between 0.8 and 1.2 metres high and up to 3.4 metres wide, gives way on the west to a low scarp held in place by a basal revetment of small boulders, only partially surviving. On the north, the boundary takes yet another form, a steep scarp running alongside a sunken lane roughly five metres across. These sunken lanes, worn down over centuries of use, are common features of the Irish rural landscape, and their presence beside an early ecclesiastical site often points to long-established patterns of movement and access.

The church remains sit at the east end of the enclosure, on the more level ground, while the land drops away noticeably to the west beyond them, towards a stream about a hundred metres distant. The enclosure itself measures approximately 52 metres east to west and 50 metres north to south, giving it an almost regular, planned quality that is often associated with early medieval ecclesiastical foundations in Ireland. The place-name Templelusk combines the Irish word for church, "teampall", with a second element that ties the site linguistically to its ecclesiastical origins, though the full history of the community that once used it remains largely unrecorded.