The church was dedicated to St. David, the patron saint of Wales, on the 1st of March 1410, which is an unusual dedication for inland Limerick and hints at connections, whether ecclesiastical or settler-driven, that are no longer easy to trace.

The antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1904 to 1905, recorded the key details of both the fabric and the documentary history. The settlement appears in records as Ballytankard as early as 1291 and 1303, and by 1320 it had already become the subject of legal dispute. Plea rolls from the reign of Edward II show suits being brought by Thomas Bussell, Anselm, and Thomas Myagh to determine whether one John de Cogan had been unjustly disseised, meaning wrongfully dispossessed, of lands in Tancardeston by John Russell, the grandfather of Thomas Bussell. A separate suit involving Nicholas and Juliana de Lees and Adam de Goulys concerned the same lands. These are the kinds of medieval property disputes that rarely survive in local memory but speak to a settlement with enough value to be worth contesting. Westropp measured the building at 43 feet by 24 feet, roughly 13 metres by 7.3 metres, placing it among the smaller rural parish churches of the region. By his account, only fragments of the north, south, and west walls remained, the south wall being 18 feet long and 12 feet high.

The site sits within the barony of Coshmagh in County Limerick. Visitors approaching across farmland should expect the ruins to be low and unassuming; there is no dramatic silhouette here, and the walls blend readily into the surrounding landscape, particularly in late summer when vegetation is high. The south wall, the tallest surviving section, offers the clearest sense of the original structure's scale. Because so little of the fabric remains, the interest lies as much in the documentary record as in the physical remains, and coming prepared with some knowledge of the medieval plea rolls and dedication history will make the visit considerably more rewarding.