Its churchyard contains a collection of high crosses that have drawn scholars and curious visitors for generations, and the presence of a further cross in the same enclosure is a quiet reminder that even well-documented sites tend to have corners that slip past the official record.

The village was the seat of the smallest diocese in Ireland, and the cathedral there, though roofless and weathered, retains traces of Romanesque detailing from the twelfth century. The high crosses associated with Kilfenora are among the most studied in the country, with the Doorty Cross and the West Cross particularly noted for their carved figure work and interlace ornament. A churchyard cross of this type would typically have served both as a liturgical marker and as a focus for prayer and assembly, planted in the ground near a place of burial or worship to sanctify the surrounding space.