It is an unlikely combination: ancient masonry reduced almost to ground level, and a Victorian-era structure made not of stone but of metal, dedicated to the Browne family, its form more industrial than funerary in appearance. The graveyard also contains a large early nineteenth-century rectangular vault, roughly six metres by four, belonging to the Egan family. Between the two, the ruined church itself has been largely reclaimed by grass and ivy, its east gable surviving to just two metres in height, with short grassed-over stubs of the north and south walls the only other indication that a building once stood here.

The church probably occupies the site of the medieval parish church of the area, which the historian Knox, writing in 1903, recorded under the name Kilbrenan. The prefix "kil" derives from the Irish "cill", meaning a church or monastic cell, suggesting an early ecclesiastical foundation, though the surviving fabric tells little about its original form or date. The site lies within what was once the demesne of Clonbern Park, the managed estate landscape that formerly surrounded a now-vanished or reduced country house. O'Flanagan, writing in 1927, also noted two holy wells in the immediate area, wells being a common feature of early Christian sites in Ireland, often associated with a patron saint and used for patterns, the traditional gatherings combining prayer with communal assembly, that persisted in rural areas well into the modern period. Whether those wells belong to the same devotional landscape as the church remains uncertain, but their proximity to the site is suggestive.

The church ruin is low enough that it can be easy to underestimate what you are looking at. The ivy-covered east gable, at two metres, is the most legible surviving element, and the graveyard around it remains in use or at least in care. The metal mausoleum is the detail most likely to stop a visitor in their tracks, an unusual choice of material and form for rural County Galway, and one that sits in deliberate contrast to the crumbling stonework it neighbours.