The site, known locally as Kilbenan, sits at the northern end of a cluster of houses in rolling grassland, with bogland opening out to the south-west. Within the graveyard stand a church and a round tower, the latter being one of those slender, tapering stone structures built primarily as bell-towers and places of refuge that became a distinctly Irish feature of early monastic settlements.

The monastery is associated with St Benen, also known as Benignus, a disciple of St Patrick. According to local tradition, a chieftain granted him the fortress of Dun Lughaid for the purpose of establishing a religious community here. The Franciscans are recorded as having founded a monastery on the site in 1428, suggesting that whatever earlier community Benen may have established, the location retained its sacred character across many centuries. A holy well lies roughly 110 metres to the north-west, and a cairn sits about 150 metres to the north-north-east, both features that commonly cluster around sites of early Christian significance in Ireland, sometimes pre-dating Christianity itself and absorbed into it over time. The townland boundary curving west of the church has been read as a possible trace of the original ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of boundary that would once have marked the sacred precinct of the monastery, separating it from the surrounding secular landscape.