That is essentially what survives at Tomdeely North on the south shore of the Shannon estuary, where an ancient parish burial ground has been so thoroughly absorbed into the surrounding farmland that by 1840 it had already been ploughed into a green field. What remains is a low earthen bank, the ghost of an enclosure, and the ruin of the church it once served.

The site sits in level pasture on the western side of Holly Island inlet, within a larger complex that includes a ruined hall house, the fortified domestic building of a minor landowner, typical of medieval Ireland. The graveyard enclosure itself is roughly rectangular, measuring approximately 65 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south, with the ruin of Tomdeely parish church positioned slightly east of centre. The boundary is defined by an earthen bank roughly 0.6 metres high and 2 metres wide, which runs in straight lines along the north and west sides but curves more freely to the east and south, perhaps following an older, organic boundary. There is a deliberate gap in the bank on the north side, about 4 metres wide and aligned directly opposite the chancel of the church, almost certainly an original entrance. A short stretch of stone facing, around 0.6 metres high, survives on the outer face of the bank near its eastern end on the north side. By 1840, when the Ordnance Survey Letters recorded that the graveyard had been tilled and was then part of a green field, whatever grave markers may have stood here had already vanished. No burial plots or markers are evident today.

The site is accessible from the south shore of the Shannon estuary in County Limerick, in the townland of Tomdeely North. The level pasture setting means the low earthen bank is best read in low-angle light, early morning or late afternoon, when its slight rise above the surrounding ground becomes more legible. Look for the break in the bank on the north side as a clue to how the space was once entered, and note how the church ruin sits within the enclosure rather than at its edge, suggesting the burial ground was laid out in deliberate relationship to the building from the beginning.