At its southern end stand the ruins of a Church of Ireland building, but the more quietly significant detail is what that church was built upon, or very close to: the site of the ancient parish church of Ardagh, a place of worship whose origins predate the present ruins by an unknown but likely considerable span of centuries.

The Church of Ireland ruin represents the Protestant ecclesiastical presence that took over many earlier parish sites across Ireland following the Reformation, often inheriting not just the land but the accumulated sanctity of a place that communities had been burying their dead in for generations. The graveyard itself remains in occasional use, and its collection of headstones is substantial. The earliest dateable stone goes back to 1788, according to research by Coleman published between 1913 and 1916, though the ground itself was almost certainly receiving burials long before that date was ever cut into stone. The parish of Ardagh, to which this site belongs, carries a name found in several parts of Ireland, generally understood to derive from the Irish for a high field or height, though local topography gives each instance its own particular character.

The site sits at the junction of two roads, bordered to the south and west, which means it is not difficult to locate and the enclosure is visible from the roadside. The collection of headstones, spread across a modest but well-defined space, rewards a slow walk through, particularly for anyone with an interest in local family names and the way memorial carving styles shifted across the nineteenth century.