In Irish, it derives from a phrase meaning "the well of the kings", suggesting that long before any church was built here on the banks of the River Suir in County Kilkenny, this was a place considered sacred or significant. That layering, a holy well tradition absorbed into Christian practice and then into a medieval ecclesiastical site, is a pattern repeated across Ireland, though each instance has its own particular texture.

The townland sits in a quiet stretch of south Kilkenny, close to the Tipperary border, and the church ruin here is one of those sites that local people have long known about without it receiving much wider attention. Medieval parish churches of this kind were typically simple structures, often a single rectangular nave, sometimes with a later chancel addition or a small residential tower attached for the priest or a local patron. Graveyards frequently continued in use long after the roofless walls ceased to function as a place of worship, meaning the ground around such ruins can hold burials spanning many centuries. Whether any inscribed stones, architectural fragments, or early grave slabs survive at Tibberaghny is a question that the physical site itself would have to answer.