A rath is an earthen ringfort, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, so the name quietly suggests that the site may have had an earlier life as a defended farmstead or ecclesiastical enclosure before the present stone building was raised. That layered implication sits at the heart of what makes the place worth attention.

The church itself is a nave and chancel structure, meaning it consists of two rectangular spaces aligned end to end, a plan typical of early Irish ecclesiastical architecture. It measures just over ten and a half metres in length and roughly six metres wide, with walls of irregular uncoursed masonry, stone laid without the regular horizontal lines of more refined building traditions, still standing between one and a half and two and a half metres high. Both gables are substantially intact. The doorway is set into the north wall, slightly west of centre, and splays inwards, a detail that allowed more light into the interior while maintaining a narrow exterior opening. Parts of the cut granite jambs of this doorway survive in place. Round-headed windows appear in both the east and west gables, and a single niche is set into the south wall towards its western end, perhaps once used to hold a vessel or a small devotional object. Immediately to the east of the church, a rectangular spread of rubble and mortar measuring four metres by two metres may represent the foundations of a further building, though its purpose is not firmly established. The church sits on a small level platform above a pronounced north-east facing slope, with steeper ground rising to the south-west behind it, giving the site a slightly secluded, sheltered quality even within an open landscape. It is a National Monument in state ownership and has been substantially conserved.