The name translates roughly as the church of Éinne, referring to Saint Enda, the sixth-century monk credited with establishing a monastic community here that would go on to shape early Irish Christianity in ways far out of proportion to the island's size. That a church site bearing his name survives, even in ruined form, on this windswept limestone shelf above Galway Bay gives the place a particular gravity.

Enda, sometimes anglicised as Enda of Aran, is traditionally said to have founded his monastery at Killeany, the anglicised form of Cill Éinne, sometime in the late fifth or early sixth century. The site became a training ground for many of the figures now central to the early Irish church, with Ciarán of Clonmacnoise among those said to have studied here before going on to found their own communities on the mainland. The church ruin associated with the site today sits close to the shoreline, and the surrounding area retains traces of the wider early medieval landscape, including a round tower stump and the remains of further ecclesiastical structures scattered across the low ground near the modern village of Killeany. The limestone geology of Inis Mór, with its characteristic karst pavements and thin soils, meant that builders here worked with what was immediately to hand, and much of the standing fabric reflects centuries of reuse and repair rather than any single period of construction.

The site is accessible from Killeany village, which sits a short distance from the main pier at Kilronan where ferries from Rossaveel on the Connemara coast arrive. The ruins are close to the road and visible from it, though the ground around them can be uneven and the coastal exposure means the weather shifts quickly even in summer.