The very place name offers a clue to its significance: Mayo itself derives from the Irish Maigh Eo, meaning plain of the yew trees, and the town grew up around one of early medieval Ireland's most celebrated monastic foundations. Whether these particular ruins are a remnant of that larger monastic complex, or represent a later ecclesiastical building on the same ground, is a question the surviving stonework alone cannot easily answer.

The original monastery at Mayo was founded in the seventh century and became, by the eighth century, a place of considerable scholarly reputation, drawing students from across Europe and earning the distinction of being called, in some early sources, Mayo of the Saxons, on account of the number of English monks who settled there. Like most Irish monastic sites, it endured cycles of raid, decay, reform, and rebuilding across the medieval period. Ruins described simply as an abbey in this part of Mayo are likely connected, in some way, to that long institutional history, though the precise date and character of what now remains on this particular site has not been fully documented in the public record.