Known on Ordnance Survey maps from 1838 and 1921 as Teamplenafear Monastery, or the Men's Church, it is one of three ecclesiastical buildings clustered on this island, the other two being St Brendan's Oratory a few metres to the north-west, and a Women's Church to the south-west that no longer survives at all. Burials have taken place inside the roofless interior, marked not by inscribed headstones but by low, plain upright slabs and a small cairn of loosely piled stones in the north-east corner. No windows survive. The position of the original doorway remains unknown.

The monastery here is traditionally associated with St Brendan the Navigator, said to have founded it in the sixth century, though the physical fabric of the Men's Church speaks more to centuries of slow collapse than to any single moment of origin. When the scholar John O'Donovan visited in 1838, it was already a ruin, and he noted that the doorway had been destroyed, though he did not record where it had once been. The earl of Dunraven, writing shortly after, confirmed the eastern wall was already gone and referred to the building as Tempúl na Naomh, the Church of the Saints. Thomas J. Westropp, recording the site in 1904, noted the same traditional Irish names and suggested that a crudely rebuilt section at the south-west angle might mark where the original entrance had stood. The walls that do remain are built in what is described as cyclopean style, meaning they incorporate very large stone blocks, giving them a massive, almost rough-hewn character despite their modest scale. The south wall leans noticeably outward, the west wall tilts to one side, and a gap near the western end of the north wall is currently plugged, rather improbably, by an oil drum. A photograph taken in 1894 by Jane Shackleton for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland shows the west wall looking much as it does today, which is itself a quiet testament to how little has changed, and how little now remains to change.