Thirty-five metres to the northwest of the church stands a 12th-century high cross alongside a bullaun stone, a bullaun being a rounded hollow cut into a boulder that is typically associated with early monastic sites and sometimes used for grinding or ritual purposes. Kilgobbin Castle lies just under 500 metres to the north-northeast. What makes this cluster of remains quietly striking is not any single monument but the cumulative evidence, much of it invisible, for a site that was continuously reshaped across several centuries.

The place name itself carries an unexpected depth. Kilgobbin derives from Cill Ghobáin, the church of Gobán, a saint whose feast day on 1 April appears in the Martyrology of Tallaght, and whose name, as the scholar Ó Riain noted in 2011, connects to a whole network of early Irish naming traditions rooted in the word for a smith. The same root, gabha or gobha, gives us the legendary craftsman the Gobán Saor and, in a less diminutive form, Goibhne, the smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The monastery here is traditionally attributed to St. Gobán in the 7th century, and that foundation appears to be more than just tradition. When archaeologist Teresa Bolger excavated to the west and south of the church in 2004, in advance of a housing development, she uncovered a layered sequence of curvilinear enclosures, corn-drying kilns, and field ditches, the majority of which dated to between AD 650 and 950. The excavation identified at least four main phases of early medieval activity, beginning with simple slot-trenches and pits, progressing through successive enclosures of increasing scale, and culminating in clear evidence for metalworking: slag deposits, crucible fragments, clay mould pieces, and a collection of copper-alloy pins, a polychrome bead fragment, a lignite bracelet, and a highly ornate copper-alloy clasp.

The site is accessible from Kilgobbin Lane near Stepaside, on the southern fringes of County Dublin. The church ruins and graveyard remain the most visible element for a visitor, and the high cross and bullaun stone to the northwest are worth locating carefully, as they sit close to the churchyard boundary. The ground here can be soft, particularly after rain, so appropriate footwear is sensible. Much of what Bolger's excavation revealed was backfilled and preserved in situ beneath the adjacent development, meaning the archaeology is largely underground and out of sight, but the scale of what was found gives the visible ruins a different weight once you know it is there.