Ardkilmartin derives from the Irish for the height of the church of Martin, and the dedication to St. Martin of Tours runs through the documentary record here with unusual consistency across several centuries, suggesting a site that mattered locally long before much of the surrounding landscape was formally recorded.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in 1904 and 1905, gathered the surviving references into a concise but telling sequence. The earliest mention dates to 1291, when the site appears as Martin's chapel. By 1410, the placename Ballichuillean is recorded in connection with a dedication to St. Martin on the 11th of November, which is the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, a detail that confirms the saint's cult was being actively observed here rather than merely commemorated in name. A further Latin reference, Capella Martini, appears in 1418. The church later fell within the Liberties of Kilmallock, a jurisdictional zone associated with that walled medieval town, and in 1667, under the Act of Settlement, the property was granted to a Bishop William. The Act of Settlement was the post-Cromwellian legislation by which land ownership across Ireland was redistributed, often transferring holdings from Catholic to Protestant hands, and this grant fits the broader pattern of ecclesiastical property changing hands during that period.

The site sits on the edge of the townland of Ballycullaun, close to the village of Bulgaden in the south of the county. What remains today is a ruined church, and visitors should expect little more than the fabric of walls in varying states of survival. The surrounding countryside is quiet agricultural land, and the approach will likely involve negotiating field boundaries or narrow roads. There is no visitor infrastructure here. Those with an interest in medieval ecclesiastical sites or in the landscape of the Kilmallock area will find it worth locating on a detailed Ordnance Survey map before setting out.