The north and west walls of the nave still stand, and the west gable reaches its full height, but it is squared off bluntly at the top where a small bellcote once sat, nearly collapsed even by 1840. By then the chancel arch, described at the time as semicircular in its head though already damaged at the sides, was the last sign of the choir; today that too is gone entirely. In its place the west wall was repaired and its doorway rebuilt in 1984 and 1985, work that observers have noted was poor in quality and already deteriorating not long after completion. Embedded in the inner face of that same wall is a flat stone, roughly 30 by 60 centimetres, with a circular hole near one end, its original purpose unrecorded.

The site has roots considerably older than the standing masonry. A monastery was founded here by St. Maedoc of Ferns, who died in 625 AD, making this an early Christian foundation of some antiquity. The parish church that eventually rose on this ground is thought, on the basis of the chancel arch's form, to date from the 12th or early 13th century, though the style of the original west doorway, described in earlier records as cyclopean in character, meaning built with large irregular stones fitted without mortar, may point to a slightly earlier date for the nave. The church sits within the centre of an early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure, and the graveyard contains a burial tomb built against the inside of the north wall, as well as a Sullivan family plaque on the exterior of the same wall, recording deaths between 1682 and 1716. Two loose stone fragments in the graveyard, now serving as grave markers, are thought to have originally come from the church fabric itself.

The ecclesiastical enclosure is also ringed by holy wells, a common feature of early Irish monastic sites where water sources carried religious significance and often continued as places of local devotion long after the monasteries themselves fell out of use. St. Patrick's Well lies roughly 30 metres to the south-east; Lady's Well sits about 10 metres to the south-south-west of the enclosure; and Sunday's Well is some 50 metres further in the same direction. Visiting in dry weather makes the ground easier to read, and it is worth taking time to locate the perforated stone in the rebuilt west wall, an overlooked detail that tends to go unnoticed against the rougher surrounding repair work.