Among the pieces preserved there is the head of an ogee window, a form characterised by its S-shaped double curve, along with several large drainage slabs and arched sections of a doorway. These fragments are not decorative oddities; they are what remains of a priory that was itself the continuation of a much older and more remote monastic tradition.

The abbey was the priory of the Arroasian Canons of the Order of St Augustine, founded in 1210 or shortly afterwards, with its origins traced back to Rattoo in north Kerry. What gives it an unusual depth, however, is its connection to Skellig Michael, the extraordinary rock outcrop rising from the Atlantic roughly twelve kilometres offshore. The early monastery on Skellig Michael, founded by Irish monks in the sixth or seventh century, was transferred to the mainland prior to the mid-eleventh century, the hazardous conditions on the rock having made continued occupation untenable. The community that made that crossing eventually became the Ballinskelligs priory, and the institution retained formal possession of the Great Skellig for centuries, keeping the alias 'de Rupe Michaelis', meaning 'of the Rock of Michael'. The architectural fragments now sheltered in the Prior's House are, in a sense, the physical residue of that long institutional thread, stone details salvaged from a building whose congregation once endured one of the most severe monastic environments in the Christian world.