What makes its presence here slightly unusual is that it was never originally intended for this site at all; it exists at Ardbrack because an act of parliament was passed in 1743 specifically to relocate the parish church of Rincurran, effectively uprooting an older congregation and resettling it on higher ground.

The church that resulted from that parliamentary act is a gabled rectangular structure with a tower at the western end and a northern transept containing a vestry. It stood largely in this form until 1890, when it underwent extensive renovation and was re-roofed, a set of changes substantial enough to have left a clear mark on its present appearance. The graveyard surrounding it is rectangular, measuring roughly ninety metres east to west and forty-five metres north to south, and its earliest surviving headstones date from the 1750s, only a decade or so after the building itself was raised. The ground is still in active use as a burial place, which gives the site an unbroken continuity that stretches back nearly three centuries. Regular worship ceased around 1990, and the building has since taken on a quieter role as St. Catherine's Retreat and Christian Education Centre, a shift that suits the atmosphere of the place rather well.

The graveyard itself repays a slow walk. Those mid-eighteenth-century headstones, weathered but legible in places, represent some of the earliest carved funerary stonework you are likely to find in the immediate area around Kinsale, and the westward view across the harbour from the elevated ground gives a sense of why this particular spot was considered worth the effort of an act of parliament.