That combination, of substantial survival alongside conspicuous absence, gives the ruin an oddly legible quality. Stones from different centuries sit alongside one another without apology: a fragment of a graveslab, probably sixteenth century and incised with a seven-armed segmental cross with fleur-de-lis terminals, has been pressed into the outer face of the south wall beside a doorway added in the nineteenth century. A perforated stone, possibly a cross base in a former life, sits above the door lintel. The building accumulates its own history in the masonry, layer by layer.

The church's documented life spans at least five centuries of active use. It appears in the Papal Taxation of 1291, which provides a useful baseline, and was still described as being in repair in 1615, and in pretty good repair in 1694, though that later account notes it had been much damaged during the wars of the preceding decades. By 1774 it had been abandoned and replaced by a chapel-of-ease near Mitchelstown Castle. The fabric itself tells a similarly complicated story. The south wall of the nave, built of rectangular sandstone blocks and terminating in an anta, a projecting pilaster characteristic of early Irish church architecture, is the oldest surviving element and Romanesque in character. The jambs of the window and doorway in the chancel's south wall may date to the thirteenth century, while the pointed limestone chancel arch, with its chamfered edges and tapering terminals, looks like fifteenth or sixteenth century work. The east window of the chancel is probably early seventeenth century. Extensive intervention in the late nineteenth century further complicated the picture, with Moore's 1889 account recording the rebuilding of stretches of the south and north walls, which explains why the north wall is noticeably thicker than its counterpart opposite. A memorial to the Kingston family of Mitchelstown Castle was built against the inner face of that north wall at some point, a reminder of the social weight that burial rights within such structures once carried.

The interior is densely occupied with burial plots, and the graveyard surrounding the church remains in use, which means the site retains an active, inhabited quality despite the roofless walls. The chancel arch, standing at just over three metres, gives a reasonable sense of the building's original scale even without a roof to frame it.