What makes it quietly notable is the presence of a ruined eighteenth-century church occupying the northern half of the enclosure, its remains sharing ground with headstones that span two centuries of the Protestant community's history in this part of Connacht.

The graveyard itself measures roughly forty metres north-north-west to south-south-east and forty-four metres east-north-east to west-south-west, a compact but not insignificant space. The headstones date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a period when the Church of Ireland, as the established church under the Protestant Ascendancy, maintained a visible institutional presence even in predominantly Catholic regions of rural Mayo. The ruined church predates at least some of those burials, suggesting the building had already fallen out of regular use while the graveyard around it continued to receive the dead. The river beside it, which also carries the anglicised name Newport River, would have made this a recognisable landmark on the southern approach to Newport town.