The site is known today as Whitechurch, but its older Irish designation, Killhunsin, points to a much earlier layer of significance, one that predates the anglicised name by centuries. The church itself, tucked into the north-west corner of the enclosing wall, adds a quiet spatial oddness to the place; churches positioned within walled burial grounds were often the focal point of a whole townland's religious life, and their placement within the enclosure rather than beside it tells you something about how the space was organised and understood.

The earliest documentary evidence for the site comes from the early thirteenth century, when it was confirmed to the Abbey of St. Mary's in Dublin under the dual name of Killhunsin or the white church, a detail recorded by F. E. Ball in 1905. St. Mary's was a Cistercian foundation on the north side of Dublin city, and the confirmation of this Co. Dublin church to its care suggests the abbey held significant land interests in the surrounding area. The name Killhunsin is harder to unpick with certainty, but the pairing of it with the Latin-influenced "white church" in the same document implies the two names were understood as equivalents at the time. By the mid-seventeenth century the site was established enough to appear on the Down Survey, the ambitious mapping project carried out between 1655 and 1656 under William Petty, which recorded land ownership and settlement across Ireland following the Cromwellian conquest.

The graveyard sits on raised ground, which means it is visible from some distance and the approach gives a sense of the site's relationship to the landscape before you reach it. The enclosing wall is the defining feature to look for on arrival, along with the position of the church remains in the north-west corner of the enclosure. As with many sites of this type, the layers of use, early medieval, post-Norman, early modern, are not always easy to read at ground level, but the fabric of the place repays slow attention.