Writing in 1906, John Begley noted this as a very unusual circumstance, and it remains one of the more quietly anomalous features of any early Irish church in the region. The doorway itself is worth pausing over. Massive in construction, with a large flat lintel and jambs that lean slightly inward as they rise, it tapers from a width of just over three feet at the base to under three feet at the top. This technique, known as inclined jambs, is characteristic of early Irish stone churches and gives the entrance a solidity that feels less like a threshold and more like a statement. The narrow western window splays inwardly, widening on the interior face to admit more light than its tight exterior opening would suggest.

The church belongs to a class known as Domnach foundations, a word derived from the Latin dominica, meaning Sunday. According to the Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick, churches bearing this name were founded by Patrick personally, the tradition being that he marked out their foundations on a Sunday. This site appears in the medieval record as Donaghmor and Douenathmor as early as 1200 and 1201, and later as Dounaghmor in 1302 and 1410, by which point it had become a prebend, a church with an endowment attached to a cathedral chapter. Its history is one of grants and disputes: Bishop Edward granted it to Odo fitz Budci; the Prior of Athissel restored it to Bishop Hubert in 1239; Maurice, Bishop of Killaloe, granted it to Bishop Gerald between 1275 and 1299; and Richard de Burgo was claiming its lands from a John Sweyn as late as 1300. In 1593, Canon Robert Chaffe appointed it a prebend following the death of Richard Arthur. The fabric itself, an early Celtic church measuring roughly 39 feet by 26 feet externally, with side walls standing about 11 feet high, has survived this long administrative history with considerable integrity.

The site lies approximately two miles east of Limerick city. The eastern gable is described as late in date and blank, offering little to read, so attention is better directed at the west end and the south wall, where a narrow window slit near the eastern gable is compared by Begley to one surviving at Mungret church. When Begley wrote in 1906, the gables were thickly covered with ivy, and the church retained what he called all the characteristics of the primitive Irish church. Visitors approaching from the city should bear in mind that the surroundings are rural and the site itself is modest in scale; it rewards close attention to its stonework rather than any grand impression from a distance.