The ruins belong to a Carmelite house, and the burial ground that grew up around them has never quite fallen out of use. That combination, a functioning graveyard wrapped around a long-collapsed friary, gives the place at Abbey-Lands an atmosphere that is quietly at odds with the busy harbour town a short walk to the south-east.

The Carmelites, a mendicant order with origins in twelfth-century Palestine, established friaries across Ireland during the medieval period, typically on the margins of established towns. This one sat just beyond Kinsale's walls, in the manner typical of such foundations, close enough to the urban community to serve it, but outside the formal boundary. The friary itself is now a ruin, though its remains survive to mark the outline of what once stood. Around it, family tombs have accumulated over the generations, and the headstones that can be read date from the eighteenth century onward, suggesting the site retained its importance as a burial place long after the religious life of the friary had ended. A holy well lies nearby, which would not be unusual for a site of this kind; wells associated with religious houses or sacred ground were common features of the Irish landscape, often continuing to attract local veneration independently of whatever institution had originally sanctioned them.