A rath is a circular earthwork enclosure, typically of early medieval Irish origin, used in ancient times as a farmstead or place of defence. Placing a nineteenth-century private burial ground within one was a distinct choice, layering a family's sense of permanence onto a landscape that already carried centuries of human significance.

The burial ground opened in 1823, and the graves are arranged in two orderly rows within low cut-stone enclosures, each marked by a small headstone carrying only the occupant's name. That austerity has a certain quality to it, a deliberate restraint that draws the eye all the more readily to what was added in 1854: a large four-sided pyramidal stone column erected near the centre of the rath. Each face of the column, and its base, bears carved inscriptions recording particulars of family members buried nearby. Many of those commemorated had careers in the army and public service, and the column reads almost as a collective record of a family's public life, set down in stone at the middle of an ancient earthwork in the west of Ireland. The combination of the plain individual headstones and this single elaborate centrepiece gives the enclosure an uncommon character, part regimental memorial, part private garden of the dead.