Whoever placed it there in a later phase of construction either didn't notice or didn't mind that a piece of finely worked medieval sculpture was being pressed into service as building rubble. It is the kind of quiet indignity that tells you a great deal about how attitudes to earlier fabric shifted across the centuries.

The friary is first recorded in 1425, the year it is reputed to have been founded by Walter de Bermingham, and the surviving church, roughly 35 metres long on an east-west axis, is the only part of the original monastery still standing. Its west gable preserves a 15th-century doorway of considerable quality, decorated with three shallow orders of fluted chamfers and moulded capitals, and crowned by an ogee-form hood whose tall slender pinnacles terminate in carved poppy-heads, the stylised leaf or flower finials common in late medieval ecclesiastical stonework. A holy water stoup is set into the south jamb, and above the door sits a recess that once held a memorial tablet to the de Bermingham family. The tower dividing nave from chancel was a 16th-century insertion, and beneath its vault some original lime plaster and the impressions of wicker-centring, the temporary framework used to support an arch during construction, still survive. A small carved head is visible on the tower's south-east pier. The chancel itself had a second life as a Protestant church from the 18th century into the early 20th century, a period responsible for the round-headed window embrasures now blocked up in its north and south walls. Medieval graveslabs and a cross-slab are also associated with the site.

The ruin sits on the north side of Barrack Street in Dunmore town, making it accessible without any particular difficulty. The crossing tower is among the more legible features from a distance, but the carved stonework rewards closer attention, particularly the west doorway and, if you know to look for it, the repurposed female head at the eastern blocked arch on the south side of the nave.