The 18th-century building served the parish of Moviddy, but it was raised on or very close to the site of an earlier church, one that predates it by an unknown span of centuries and belongs to the older, layered ecclesiastical geography of the Irish countryside.

This kind of continuity is not unusual in rural Ireland. Ancient parish boundaries and the sacred ground associated with them were frequently absorbed into the post-Reformation Church of Ireland network, and new structures were often planted directly onto earlier foundations, sometimes deliberately, sometimes simply because the community had always gathered in that place. The parish of Moviddy itself is of medieval origin, and the presence of an ancient church on or near this spot suggests a long, unbroken tradition of religious use at the site, even if the physical remains visible today date only from the 18th century.