That absence is itself the point. The townland name Killinure carries the Irish for "Church of the Yew Tree", and that etymology is, for now, the most solid evidence that an early ecclesiastical site ever existed here at all.

The antiquarian P. Power, writing in 1908, identified this location as an early church site on the strength of that place-name alone. It is a method with genuine historical weight: townland names in Ireland frequently preserve traces of buildings, landholdings, and sacred sites that have long since disappeared from the ground. What gives this particular site a little more substance is the shape of the field enclosing it. The large sub-circular field boundary may represent an ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or oval earthwork that was commonly used to demarcate early Christian monastic or church settlements in Ireland. Associated burials have also been recorded in connection with the site, suggesting that whatever once stood here served, at minimum, as a place of the dead. No masonry, no foundation courses, no upstanding remains of any kind are visible above ground today.