Killard itself is a small, scattered townland, and the church ruin there is the kind of site that tends to slip past even those who follow the back roads carefully.

The place-name Killard derives from the Irish "Cill Áird", meaning the high or elevated church, a name that suggests the site was chosen with some deliberation about its position in the landscape. Early ecclesiastical sites in Ireland were frequently established at liminal points, places where land met water, or where a promontory offered both visibility and a degree of natural separation from surrounding settlement. A church here would fit a pattern common across the west of Ireland, where early Christian communities, and later medieval parishes, made use of older sacred geographies. Without more detailed documentary or architectural evidence currently available, the precise dating and dedication of this particular structure remain unclear.