The site at Cruagh is not ruined in any dramatic sense; it simply endures, quietly accumulating layers of use and meaning across what the records suggest may be fifteen centuries.

The name itself has a history worth following. The Martyrology of Donegal records that the original Irish form was Craobhach, meaning something like "branchy place," which was later worn down into Cruagh. A 1620 inquisition referred to the same location as "Creevaghnetemple" and "Crevaghneclog," alias Newtown, suggesting the ecclesiastical association was still legible in the landscape at that point. According to O'Hanlon, writing in 1875, a saint called Dalua of Dun-Tighe-Bretan, described in the Vita Tripartita as a member of St Patrick's household, may have founded a church here in the sixth century. The same figure appears in the Martyrology of Tallaght and the Martyrology of Donegal, commemorated on the 7th of January, and is also referred to as "Molua, a pilgrim of the Bretons." The nearby hill of Tibradden, known in early sources as Tigh Bretan, carries a cairn on its summit, and the celebrated prehistoric monument called Mount Venus, a cromlech or portal tomb, stands at Craoibech close by, giving the wider area an unusual density of significant sites from very different periods.

The graveyard at Cruagh remains in use and is accessible on foot from the road that runs through the Dublin Mountains. The granite font recorded by Ní Mharcaigh in 1997 is within the graveyard boundary, and the slight evidence she noted for an enclosure would require some patience and a decent eye for subtle changes in the ground or boundary line to detect. The surrounding landscape, which includes Tibradden hill to the south, makes for a useful orientation: the early sources consistently link the two sites, and understanding one benefits from knowing something of the other.