What makes the site unusual is not what is there, but what might have been there, and the trail of cautious speculation that has followed it through the records.

The story begins with a letter written on 28 February 1939 by Captain D. B. O'Connell, who noted in his field name books that at the north-east corner of a wood he had found the foundations of what he described as "some kind of house-like building", measuring roughly 14 metres long by 5.5 metres wide. The stonework looked old, he wrote, though the place was heavily overgrown. He passed the observation to Father Donal Reidy, Secretary to the Bishop, who raised the possibility that the foundations might be those of the lost church of Ballydriscoll, a structure mentioned in Papal Taxation documents but never positively located. Papal Taxation records, drawn up in the medieval period to assess church properties liable for dues to Rome, are among the few documentary sources that preserve the names of small Irish parishes and chapels that have otherwise left no trace on the landscape. O'Connell himself was measured about the suggestion, calling it, in his own words, "pure surmise." The site was formally noted as a possible church location in 1990, on the strength of that single letter. When someone went to look in 2000, no visible trace of the structure remained.