The graveyard measures roughly 64 metres from northeast to southwest and 40 metres across, enclosed by a stone wall, with an entrance at the northern end of the western wall where the public road passes close by. A later extension has been added on the northern side, suggesting the burial ground gradually outgrew its original boundaries.

The church itself dates to the 13th century, placing its construction in the period when the Anglo-Norman presence in Kilkenny was actively reshaping the landscape with stone ecclesiastical buildings. Inside, graveslabs survive from the 13th and 14th centuries, a reminder that the site functioned as a place of some local importance long before the rows of 18th-century headstones now visible in the yard were ever commissioned. Graveslabs of this period are typically flat, incised stone markers laid flush with or slightly above the ground inside a church interior, often bearing carved crosses or, on more elaborate examples, figural or heraldic decoration. The presence of the Grace chapel is particularly notable; the Graces were a prominent Anglo-Norman family in Kilkenny, and their having a dedicated chapel within this complex points to the kind of patronage relationship between powerful local families and parish churches that was common throughout medieval Ireland.