To the west, the land opens out into an extensive bog, and roughly 230 metres to the southeast lies St Gobnet's holy well, making this a quiet cluster of early Christian and medieval remains in a landscape that has changed relatively little around them. What sets the site apart, beyond its setting, is a stretch of rock outcrop near the southwest corner of the church where a large number of incised grooves have been cut into the stone. Their purpose remains unexplained; such markings appear at a number of early ecclesiastical sites in Ireland, but no definitive interpretation has been settled upon.

The site is associated with St Lonan, and a pattern, the traditional Irish gathering of prayer and communal activity held on a patron saint's feast day, was formerly observed here on the 3rd of March in his honour. The church appears in the diocesan listing of parochial churches for 1622, and by 1633 its incumbent was Thomas Harris, who also served the parishes of Cahir and Glanbehy. At that date the church was recorded as being under the patronage of one Edwardus Spring. It had fallen into ruin by the middle of the eighteenth century, as noted by Charles Smith in 1756. The nearby castle site adds another layer to the history of the immediate area, suggesting that this was once a more administratively significant location than its present remoteness might suggest.