The land gives almost nothing away now, save for a dome-shaped rise near the centre of a field still known as the Cluain, its crown unusually stony and its sides steep on most aspects, dropping only gradually toward the north-east. These are the kinds of topographical whispers that archaeologists learn to read, traces of a deliberately shaped sacred landscape that time and ploughs have slowly dismantled.

The scholar P. Power, writing in 1932, identified the site as Cill Cluaisi, which he named as the chief church of the Tuath O Fiannadhuigh, a local territorial grouping of early medieval Ireland. Tuath referred to the basic unit of Gaelic political and social organisation, a petty kingdom or people, and a chief church within such a territory would have held considerable local religious authority. Power located the site in a field called Cluain on the summit of a ridge overlooking the main road, at the bottom of a glen then on the farm of Denis Coghlan. He noted that the outline of a circular surrounding fence, the kind of enclosure typical of early Irish ecclesiastical sites, was still traceable at the time and appeared to enclose roughly an acre. Two adjoining fields, the Cluain and the far Cluain, preserved the old place-name, which carries associations with a meadow or secluded pasture. By the time the site was assessed more recently, no physical trace of the enclosure remained visible, leaving only the field names and the subtle dome of the ridge as evidence that something significant once stood here.