Cereal-drying kilns, which used controlled heat to dry grain before milling or storage, were common enough features of early medieval Irish farming life, but their clustering around a graveyard perimeter gives the site an unusual character, as though the working landscape and the sacred one had been carefully negotiated against each other.

The site came to light during excavations carried out in 2007 and 2008 ahead of road improvement works on the N9/N10 route between Kilcullen and Waterford. Set on a gravel ridge, bounded to the east by a stream and to the north by waterlogged ground, the location would have been a practical one for agricultural activity. Of the five kilns uncovered, four are interpreted as cereal-drying kilns positioned around the burial ground. The fifth, found within the boundary of the graveyard itself, is the most intriguing: it clearly pre-dated the burials, meaning that the ground was used for industrial or domestic purposes before it became a place of the dead. Small amounts of slag recovered from this earlier kiln suggest it may have functioned as a furnace rather than a grain-dryer. Alongside the kilns, two clusters of hearths, pits, and post-holes were excavated nearby, pointing to a wider pattern of settlement and activity in the immediate area.