No walls remain, no grave markers that would catch a passing eye. The local tradition, however, holds firm: this depression in the ground marks the site of an early church and its associated burial ground, the kind of place that receded into the landscape over centuries while the memory of it persisted in the name of the land itself.

The placename is the key. Killountain derives from Cill Fhionntain, meaning the church of St Fintan, a dedication that points toward the early medieval period when such cill foundations, small monastic or ecclesiastical enclosures often associated with a named Irish saint, were established across the country. A cill typically comprised a church or oratory, sometimes a burial ground, and frequently a holy well nearby, and all three elements appear to have been present here. Scholar S. P. O'Riordan noted the site in 1931, recording both the church and an associated holy well, while later work by O'Donoghue in 1986 clarified the Irish form of the name and its Fintan connection. St Fintan was a reasonably common dedication in early Irish Christianity, borne by several saints, though which Fintan this particular cill commemorated is not recorded.