The north wall has been levelled almost entirely. Yet the very scantiness of what remains is part of what makes the site worth attention. A place can accumulate centuries of legal dispute, ecclesiastical administration, and shifting ownership, and leave behind little more than a few courses of stone and a modern burial plot pressed up against the northwest angle.

The church served what was once the ancient parish of Cloonanna, situated within the barony of Pubblebrian, a parish that has long since been merged into its neighbours. Its name appears in records as far back as 1291, rendered variously as Clonany, Cluainanny, Clunany, and Cluonnanna over the following centuries, the spellings drifting with each successive administration. In 1318, a man named John Purcel was involved in a legal claim for dower rights over land in Clonany Hyrtherag, a dispute entered in the Plea Rolls of Edward II. By 1655 the Civil Survey recorded it as a parish in its own right. After the upheaval of the Cromwellian period, a property described as Clounana Temple was granted to a W. Barker in 1667 under the Act of Settlement. The antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1904 and 1905, noted that the west end and much of the sides were still standing in 1875, adding with evident regret that he had been told much had since been levelled. Begley, writing in 1906, described the ruins as standing on rising ground on the east bank of the River Maigue, to the north of Adare parish, with a view across the surrounding countryside.

The site sits on elevated ground near the Maigue, and the approach offers some of that riverside landscape Begley noted, though the ruins themselves require a careful eye to read. The surviving west gable, measured at around 2.35 metres high and 0.74 metres thick, is the most legible element; the rest calls for patience and some familiarity with how ruined medieval churches tend to dissolve back into their surroundings. The northwest angle has been altered by a modern burial plot, so the graveyard remains in some use. There is no dramatic set piece here, rather a quiet accumulation of detail for those willing to look slowly.