The circularity is significant; it is one of the features that archaeologists associate with early ecclesiastical enclosures in Ireland, suggesting the site at Kilturk has roots considerably older than any structure now visible. The bank, still standing roughly a metre high on the interior, and faint traces of an outer fosse on the southern and western sides give the enclosure a quietly formal character, the bones of something that once mattered.

The layered history of what stood inside is a small story of architectural misfortune. John O'Donovan, the nineteenth-century scholar and placename surveyor, noted around 1840 that the original medieval parish church of Kilturk had been demolished around 1815. It was replaced by a church with a tower, but that tower collapsed not long after it was built. A third structure, St. John's Church of Ireland church, was then erected around 1865, and it is this building that still occupies the site today, though now roofless and ruinous. Nothing of the first medieval church survives above ground, and archaeological monitoring carried out roughly ninety metres to the north-east recovered no archaeological features, leaving the earlier phases of the site essentially undocumented in physical terms. Three buildings on the same ground, and the earliest has left almost no trace; only the enclosure itself holds the longer memory.