When the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded this spot, it appeared as an irregular, unenclosed patch of ground, roughly 45 metres by 25 metres, with no surrounding wall or fence to define it against the landscape. That open, informal quality is characteristic of burial grounds that predate organised parish infrastructure, places where the dead were interred through custom rather than institution.

The site has since been both enlarged and enclosed, acquiring the bounded, tended appearance of a conventional graveyard. The earliest burials that carry legible dates are from the late nineteenth century, which gives the site a firm lower boundary in terms of recorded use, though the unenclosed state shown on the earliest OS mapping hints that the ground may have been recognised as a burial place for some time before anyone thought to cut a date into stone. The River Corrib, which runs close by to the west, would have made this a well-watered and reasonably accessible location throughout the centuries when Menlough was a small rural settlement in the west of County Galway.