What makes the structure quietly puzzling is not simply its ruined state but the layered history of abandonment and replacement that it represents. This is the former Church of Ireland parish church of Gortroe, and by the time the building now standing was raised in the early eighteenth century, it was already doing the work of a predecessor that had been recorded as ruinous as far back as 1615.

The earlier church on this site was still in ruins in 1694, according to Brady's 1863 clerical history of the diocese, suggesting that whatever congregation existed here went without a functioning building for the better part of a century. The replacement, the church whose shell survives today, was eventually noted as being in repair by 1774. It is a modest structure, measuring roughly fifteen metres along its east-west axis and just under seven metres across, with splayed windows in the north wall and the remains of two more visible in the south. A blocked doorway in the west gable once opened onto a porch. Inside the west end, the burial vault of the Mayes family is built into the fabric of the building, a private enclosure within what was itself already a semi-public monument. The church's working life proved relatively short; by 1825 the congregation had moved to a new church, St Peter's, built about 600 metres to the northwest. That building no longer survives either, which leaves the earlier ruin as the sole standing trace of centuries of organised worship in the parish.

The site is accessible within the graveyard at Ballinterry, and the east gable retains a window opening that gives a sense of the original interior arrangement, even with the vegetation that now fills the space. The Mayes family vault at the west end is visible from the exterior and worth noting as a reminder that for certain families, burial within the church walls rather than the surrounding ground carried its own distinct meaning.