Locals have long called it the Churchyard, or the Church-field; in Irish it is known as Shanakill, meaning simply the old church. That layering of memory is often the most durable thing about an early medieval site, outlasting the walls themselves by centuries.

The local historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905, recorded what could still be made out on the ground at that time. Within a rectangular enclosure measuring roughly 39 metres by 30 metres, the foundations of a small church were just visible along the eastern fence, running about 9 metres east to west and 5.3 metres wide. Carrigan judged the church to belong to the earliest period of Irish Christianity, when small stone oratories were built on hillside clearings above the surrounding countryside. Immediately to the south lay a second, slightly smaller enclosure, with further foundation traces that he cautiously identified as possibly a monastic cell, a monastery building, or a priest's house. In his unpublished manuscript notes, Carrigan was more specific about the earthworks: the northern enclosure had a clearly defined rampart and fosse, the fosse being the external ditch that typically accompanied such an enclosure, with the raised bank rising several feet above the trench bottom. A low mound within the northern enclosure suggested the collapsed remains of mud walls. The southern enclosure's bank and ditch were less pronounced. Both enclosures sit parallel to one another, sharing a field boundary as one of their sides. Carrigan noted that the spot commands an extensive view westward.

Today the clearing sits surrounded by forestry plantation, and the monuments themselves are completely obscured by dense bramble growth. Whatever Carrigan could still trace in 1905 is no longer visible at ground level. The place survives mainly as a name on the land and a set of measurements in an old historian's notes.