The old parish church of Old Connaught, sitting in a burial ground just outside the village of the same name in south County Dublin, is one of those quietly intact survivors. Small but complete, it retains its east gable, a bellcote over the west gable, and walls of random granite and sandstone held together with dressed granite quoins, the carefully shaped corner stones that give a building its structural definition. The whole thing measures just over ten metres long and not quite six metres wide internally, making it an intimate space, compact even by the standards of early Irish parish churches.

Writing in 1838, the historian D'Alton recorded a round-arched opening in the south wall, a detail that places the building's origins somewhere in the medieval period, when such Romanesque-influenced forms were common in Irish ecclesiastical architecture. The church has no internal division between nave and chancel, the two zones that more elaborate medieval churches would have separated physically, which suggests either an early date or a modest rural congregation that had little need for the distinction. Light enters through a lancet window in the east gable, a tall narrow opening with a pointed head typical of Gothic influence, along with a single slit opening in the west wall and square-headed openings in the north and south side walls. Two granite-faced niches are set into the south wall, one at each end, though their original purpose is not recorded in the sources. The graveyard around the church contains memorials dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The church sits outside Old Connaught village, which itself lies in the foothills south of Bray, not far from the county boundary with Wicklow. The building is set within an active burial ground, so access is generally straightforward, though as with most such sites a respectful approach is warranted. The stonework is worth examining closely: the contrast between the rough random masonry of the walls and the precision of the dressed granite quoins gives a clear sense of the craft priorities of whoever built it. The lancet window in the east gable is the single most distinctive architectural feature visible from inside, framing whatever light comes from that direction through a narrow, carefully proportioned opening that has been doing the same job for centuries.