That, in itself, is what makes this place worth knowing about. The medieval parish church of Galey, Gáile in Irish, has not merely fallen into ruin; it has vanished so completely that between the first Ordnance Survey map of 1839, which labels it 'ruinous', and the later 25-inch revision of 1910, the structure disappears from the cartographic record altogether, replaced by the quiet admission 'Galey Church (Site of)'.

The church had a long institutional life before it came to nothing. In 1302, a papal taxation of the Diocese of Ardfert valued it at 26 shillings and 8 pence per annum, placing it firmly within the medieval ecclesiastical economy of the region. By 1441, the advowson of its vicarage, meaning the right to appoint its priest, belonged to the Augustinians of Rattoo, a priory a few miles to the north. A 1615 Royal Visitation of the diocese found things in reasonable order: one John Memor was noted as 'minister able to catechise', and the church and chancel were recorded as 'well'. Yet within roughly a century and a half, the writer Charles Smith was reporting, in 1756, that the church was already in ruins, with Anthony Stoughton listed as its patron. When the Ordnance Survey's John O'Donovan visited in 1841, only a single fragment of the east gable remained standing, roughly 1.2 metres thick, built of hammered stone set in lime and sand mortar. By the time a formal graveyard survey was conducted in 2011 by Ann Frykler and Robert Hanbidge of Headland Archaeology Ltd., even that remnant was gone. The graveyard itself persists, still in use, and about half a mile to the east lies the well of Saint Bartholomew, patron of the parish, which has outlasted the church it once served by a considerable margin.