What makes it quietly remarkable is not its size, though it is very small, but its dedication: this was the parish church of what is recorded as the smallest parish in County Dublin, and it is consecrated to St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, the seventh-century Northumbrian monk and bishop whose cult was centred far away on a tidal island off the Northumberland coast. How that particular dedication arrived in this corner of County Dublin is not fully explained by the surviving record, but the church's long association with St Mary's Abbey in Dublin offers a clue to the kinds of ecclesiastical networks that shaped such choices.

The building was held by St Mary's Abbey from 1186 until 1540, when it was re-united with the parish of Clondalkin following the dissolution of the monasteries, as recorded by Ball in 1940. Structurally, it follows a simple nave-and-chancel plan, the two spaces divided by a two-centred chancel arch, with a double bellcote rising above it. The walls are built of undressed random rubble masonry, giving the ruin an unworked, almost provisional quality. Entry was through a round-arched doorway in the west gable, and the door itself was rebated and fitted with draw bar holes, the sockets cut to receive a heavy timber bar that would have secured it from within. Inside the nave, narrow slit openings admit what little light they can; a wall press is set into the south wall, a small cupboard-like recess used for storing liturgical items. The chancel contains an aumbrey, a similar niche in the east wall used to hold the reserved sacrament or sacred vessels, and the east window sits in a deep, widely splayed embrasure with a stepped feature at its base.

The graveyard remains disused but accessible, and the ruins are visible from the surrounding area. Visitors should note that to the south of the graveyard there is a possible moated site, a type of enclosed medieval farmstead surrounded by a water-filled ditch, which adds further archaeological interest to what is already a surprisingly layered corner of the landscape. The church itself is compact enough to take in at a glance, but the detail repays a slower look: the draw bar holes in the doorway jambs, the aumbrey low in the chancel wall, and the bellcote overhead, now silent above the arch.