The hill drops steeply to the east and south toward the Castlebar River, and a rath, the earthwork remains of an early medieval ringfort, sits on a higher ridge only eighty metres to the north-west. A holy well lies seventy-five metres to the north-north-east. The effect is of an entire early medieval sacred landscape compressed into a few hundred square metres, each element legible but barely separated from the next.

Tradition holds that the monastery here was founded by St. Patrick, and the site remained under the jurisdiction of the archbishopric of Armagh until at least the early thirteenth century. The round tower, that tall tapering stone cylinder characteristic of early Irish monasteries and used for bell-ringing and, possibly, refuge, is the sole survivor from that earliest phase of occupation. The present church is largely a seventeenth-century construction, though it may incorporate fragments of an older medieval fabric; two architectural pieces found on site, a section of an early medieval round-arched window head and a sandstone block with foliate carving probably dating to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, are the only physical traces of whatever church preceded the current building. The Annals of Loch Cé record that the monastery was plundered in 1236 by MacWilliam Burke, and the site evidently continued to be modified and restored well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The church repays close attention. The south transept, now closed off behind an iron gate, contains four tombs and some of the most interesting stonework on the site. A late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century four-light mullioned window survives intact in the west wall, its cut limestone frame heavily punch-dressed, the hood-moulding above it stepped at the ends and crowned by a triangular stone at its centre; the flanking stones carry small decorative roundels, each with a central rosette and a segmented outer ring. The arch of a tomb recess in the east wall is formed from punch-dressed limestone blocks bearing diagonal crosses and lozenge patterns, the stones mismatched in size and apparently salvaged from elsewhere and reused. A polygonal holy-water stoup, probably also late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century, projects from the north wall nearby. Crucifixion plaques are set into the exterior walls, graveslabs with mostly eroded inscriptions lie in the gravel floor, and the whole accumulation of layers, from Patrician foundation to Victorian headstone, sits quietly on its hill above the river valley.