At Dunbrody in Co. Wexford, a small rectangular church has its western wall built clean over two piers of an earlier gatehouse, meaning the chapel came after the gate, incorporating and effectively erasing what had stood before it. That layering of structures, one generation of building swallowing the bones of another, gives this modest ruin an architectural complexity out of all proportion to its size.

The chapel served as the Capella ante portas of Dunbrody Abbey, a term meaning the chapel before the gates, a designated space where lay people and local parishioners could worship without entering the enclosed Cistercian precinct proper. It sits on the flood-plain of the Campile River, roughly 120 metres south-west of the abbey itself, and forms the western boundary of a rectangular graveyard enclosed by masonry walls. The building measures about 11.6 metres east to west externally, with both gables surviving close to their original height. Chamfered sandstone quoinstones at the north-west angle suggest the chapel is broadly contemporary with the abbey, but there is clear evidence of later intervention. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Etchingham family took up residence in the abbey buildings, and the chapel was most likely reworked during their occupation. The western doorway, which has a flat rather than pointed arch, may be an insertion or rebuild from this period. Inside, a pointed niche survives in the south wall near the west end, and the east gable retains a large two-light limestone window under a square hood moulding. The walls, now heavily colonised by ivy, are in poor condition, but the shell of the building remains largely intact to around 2.5 metres in height.