It came into being not simply because a congregation needed a roof, but because three formerly separate parishes, Ballyoughtra, Mogely, and Cahirultan, were merged into one, and the newly unified entity required a single church to call its own.

The proposal to build here dates to 1710, though construction moved at the pace that ecclesiastical projects often do, and the building was not consecrated until 1731. Nearly a century and a half later, in 1870, it was improved and enlarged, producing the form visible today. The present structure has a rectangular nave lit by five round-headed windows along its southern wall, above which a cut limestone bandcourse, a horizontal band of dressed stone, runs as a unifying decorative element. To the east there is an apse, a semicircular or polygonal projection that typically houses the altar end, finished with a hipped roof. The western end carries an embattled tower, its battlemented parapet giving the building a quietly fortified appearance, with a round-headed door at its base. A vestry occupies the western end of the northern wall. The graveyard surrounding it is rectangular and contains inscribed headstones dating from the late eighteenth century onward, the building itself remaining in occasional use.

The headstones are worth taking time over if the gate is open. Late eighteenth-century funerary carving in Cork can be quietly expressive, and the concentration of stones here reflects the long continuity of the site since the parishes were drawn together three centuries ago.