The Cistercian abbey that originally stood here, or very close by, is long gone, yet this carved stonework was preserved when the later church was constructed, reused rather than discarded, which is how a fragment of twelfth-century craftsmanship ended up framed within a building of a different faith and a different century entirely.

The doorway dates to approximately 1180 to 1200, placing it in the late Romanesque period in Ireland, a style characterised by richly decorated arched openings with layered, concentric orders of carved stone. Here, two such orders survive, formed from keeled rolls, which are mouldings with a sharp central ridge like an inverted boat keel, flanked by scalloped capitals, a form of decoration in which the top of a column is carved into a series of truncated cones or shell-like shapes. Vegetal ornament, carved foliage springing from the capitals, fills the hollow moulding between the orders. The engaged columns and their bases, which would originally have been attached to the jambs and supported the arch, are now missing. What survives is not quite the complete composition as it would have appeared, but enough to read the intention clearly. A further layer of history is present in the outer order and hood-moulding, which are later additions, dated to the fifteenth century, suggesting the doorway was already being modified or maintained long before the monastery itself ceased to function.