That a chapel should be associated with such a place is no surprise; early ecclesiastical settlements in Ireland frequently gave their names to the surrounding land, and the presence of a ruined or otherwise notable chapel here suggests a thread of religious use stretching back well before the medieval period.

The Kiltartan area is perhaps best known today through its association with Lady Augusta Gregory, the playwright and folklorist who lived at nearby Coort Park and who, along with W.B. Yeats, drew heavily on the speech and stories of the local people. The dialect she documented became known as "Kiltartanese". But the landscape itself is older and quieter than that literary fame implies, scattered with the physical remnants of centuries of settlement, worship, and abandonment that the Gregory circle would have known as simply part of the local fabric.