Though a modern road now divides the monuments, they clearly formed part of a single, larger religious complex that would have bustled with monastic life centuries ago. The site’s collection of crosses, burial grounds and stone monuments offers a fascinating glimpse into Ireland’s early Christian heritage.

On the western side of the road lies a rectangular burial ground enclosure, its ancient boundaries still visible in the landscape. Two jamb stones standing 1.5 metres apart near the southwest corner likely mark where monks and pilgrims once entered this sacred space. The enclosure contains several intriguing features: a flat-topped boulder that probably served as the base for a high cross, a possible cross-inscribed slab, and most remarkably, a decorated stone slab near the northeast end. This particular slab, measuring 0.91 metres high by 0.6 metres wide, bears mysterious carvings on its southwest face; a sword-like device accompanied by a circle with its bottom half divided into quarters, symbols whose meanings have been lost to time.

Recent archaeological work has revealed even more about Carrowmore’s hidden past. In 2012, the Bernician Studies Group conducted a magnetometer survey of the fields surrounding the high crosses, uncovering evidence of a bi-vallate early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure buried beneath the surface. This double-banked enclosure would have defined the monastery’s sacred boundaries, separating the religious community from the secular world beyond. The alignment of all the crosses at the site, orientated northwest to southeast, suggests careful planning and shared religious significance, demonstrating how these early Christian communities organised their sacred spaces with deliberate intention.