The mountain's lower reaches are scattered with the roofless stone walls of the Slievemore Deserted Village, a settlement of some eighty or more houses that was gradually abandoned during and after the nineteenth century. The church is part of this broader complex of ruins, a place where the ordinary rhythms of parish life, the marking of births, deaths, and Sundays, were simply left behind when the community dispersed to the island's coastal settlements and, in many cases, to emigrant ships.

Slievemore itself has been a place of human activity for thousands of years. Archaeological work in the area has identified evidence of prehistoric settlement on the mountain's slopes, suggesting that the landscape carries layers of occupation reaching back well before any Christian foundation. The church ruin fits into this long continuum, though its precise date of construction and the history of its use remain subjects for further research rather than settled record.