Local tradition holds that St. Patrick himself founded the monastery here, though the claim remains unverified. The site consists of a sub-rectangular graveyard containing numerous historical features, with the outline of the original Early Christian monastic enclosure revealed through a magnetometer survey conducted by the Bernician Studies Group in 2014. This geophysical investigation mapped out the boundaries of the ancient religious settlement that once surrounded the churches and graveyard.

A routine clean-up of the graveyard in 2010 led to an unexpected discovery: several previously unrecorded cross-slabs hidden beneath centuries of overgrowth. The Bernician Studies Group subsequently documented twenty cross slabs within the graveyard walls, half of which feature distinctive ringed cross inscriptions. These carved stones represent the artistic and religious traditions of early medieval Ireland, marking graves and serving as devotional objects for the monastic community.

Perhaps the most intriguing find is what appears to be the head of an unfinished high cross, lying on the surface in the northern section of the graveyard, just south of another cross-slab and close to the boundary wall. This roughly circular stone, measuring 58 centimetres in diameter, has a slightly domed surface with hollowed-out quadrants; telltale signs of a work in progress that was abandoned before completion. Why this ambitious project was never finished remains a mystery, leaving visitors to wonder what circumstances led the medieval stone carvers to down their tools and walk away from what might have become another magnificent Irish high cross.