When topsoil was stripped away during construction work, it exposed human remains, prompting an excavation that would eventually uncover 123 skeletons lying quietly beneath land that had given no obvious sign of their presence.

The follow-up excavations, recorded by Gowen in 1989, revealed a burial ground of considerable size and unusual character. A significant proportion of those interred were children and adolescents, which sets this site apart from many medieval churchyard assemblages where adult burials tend to dominate. The graves were aligned roughly east to west, consistent with Christian burial practice, in which the body was laid with the head to the west so that the deceased would face east, towards the rising sun, at the resurrection. Yet the arrangement was far from orderly; many burials were described as haphazardly placed, suggesting either urgency, informality, or repeated use of the ground over a long period without careful record-keeping. Several individuals had stones placed around and beneath their heads. These are known as pillowstones, a practice occasionally found in early medieval Irish burial sites, and their presence here is one of the key indicators used to date the cemetery. The use of pillowstones points towards a date somewhere between the 9th and 13th centuries, placing this ground within the broader early Christian and Hiberno-Romanesque period of Irish ecclesiastical life.

Kilshane lies in north County Dublin, and the burial ground came to light not through any planned archaeological survey but entirely as a consequence of infrastructure work. There is no standing monument or visible marker at ground level to alert a passing visitor, and the site does not feature on the standard tourist trail. Those with an interest in early medieval burial practice or in the archaeology of the Dublin hinterland may find it worth seeking out on foot with an OS map, though the land has been subject to development pressure and conditions on the ground will have changed since the 1988 excavation. The records compiled by Geraldine Stout remain the most accessible route into the site's significance.