The tower gives the building a faintly martial silhouette, and yet the structure beside it has spent much of its history cycling through states of ruin and reluctant repair. Just to the south, a field holds the remains of a deserted settlement known as Ballinaboy Town, a place that once had enough residents to warrant a parish church and now exists only as earthworks and memory.

The story of the church at Ballinaboy is one of repeated collapse and improvised revival. It was already in ruins by 1615, somehow restored to good repair by 1639, and then fallen into such disuse again that when a new building was erected in 1700 it was described as being constructed 'with stone and clay, and plastered within and slated, about 30 foot long, and 18 broad', a modest affair even by the standards of a small rural parish. Samuel Lewis, writing in 1837, noted it as 'a small dilapidated building', which seems to have been its natural resting state. By 1860 it was reported to be in a satisfactory condition, then closed for some years before a renovation in 1876 brought it back once more. The graveyard wall itself has an early administrative footnote: in 1676 a levy of thirteen shillings and threepence per ploughland was raised specifically for its construction, a ploughland being a traditional Irish land unit based roughly on what a plough team could work in a year.

The church today is roofless, its pointed window openings still intact, with a small annexe at the east end of the north wall. An overgrown gatehouse stands at the west end of the enclosure. The inscribed headstones date largely from the mid-nineteenth century, and the site remains in occasional use as a burial ground.