These children, denied formal Christian burial rites, were laid to rest in what are known in Ireland as cillíní, informal grave sites often located at old or unconsecrated ground. That this particular ruin was still being used for such interments within living memory gives the place a human weight that its ivy-smothered walls alone could not convey.

The building itself is a rectangle, 17 metres by 8 metres externally, with walls just over a metre thick, constructed from small irregular stones set in lime-and-sand mortar. The south wall has fared worst; a 7.5-metre section of its middle has collapsed entirely, taking the original doorway with it. What remains on that side is a single rectangular window, set close to the east gable. The north wall preserves a similar window, while the east gable retains a pointed window, the arch hinting at medieval workmanship, and the west gable a rectangular one. Ivy covers much of what stands, obscuring detail and accelerating the slow work of decay. The site has deeper ecclesiastical roots than the fabric of its surviving walls might suggest. Kilmurrily was once a Termon, a designation referring to church lands that were set apart as a sanctuary and residence for senior clergy, canons, and high dignitaries of the church. When the Irish dioceses were reorganised during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this particular Termon was placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Limerick, an arrangement that left a Kerry site answering to a Munster diocese across the county boundary, a small administrative oddity that presumably made practical sense at the time, whatever the geographic logic.