Local tradition holds that this modest ecclesiastical enclosure was once the site of an early monastic settlement, placing it within a broader pattern of early Christian communities that once dotted the Kerry landscape, often leaving little behind but a place name, a holy well, or a persistent memory in the locality.

Beyond that tradition, the record goes quiet. No founding saint is attached to the site, no annalistic entry records its fate, and no excavation has yet uncovered whatever might lie beneath the grass. The ruined church and its associated graveyard are the only physical evidence that survives. In early medieval Ireland, ecclesiastical enclosures of this type typically comprised a church, a burial ground, and sometimes ancillary buildings, all set within a roughly circular or oval boundary that marked the sacred space apart from the surrounding farmland. At Derryco, if such a boundary ever existed in formal terms, it has not been documented in any surviving record.