Some of the architectural fragments from the collapsed medieval church were repurposed as headstones in the surrounding burial ground, giving the enclosure an odd doubling of function; the same masonry that once formed part of a sacred building now marks the graves of later parishioners.

The origins of the site reach back to the sixth century, when a monastery was founded here by a figure named Odran, lending the place its early Irish name, Leitir Odráin. The settlement was evidently of some standing: the Annals of Innisfallen record the death in 1074 of Gilla Brénainn Ua Léimíne, who held the title of erenagh, meaning a lay custodian of church lands, a role that often passed hereditarily and carried considerable local authority. By 1302 the site was included in the ecclesiastical taxation of the Diocese of Killaloe, and a Royal Visitation of 1615 described the church and chancel as being in good order. What survives today tells a more complicated story. The original building was a nave and chancel church, a common early medieval form, but the nave has since been entirely destroyed. The chancel was later reused and modified, and where the chancel arch once stood there is now a destroyed late medieval west doorway, described in the Ordnance Survey Letters as a two-centred doorway, a pointed Gothic form characteristic of the later medieval period. A fragment of the east window remains inside the structure. In 1977, during the digging of a grave, four Early Christian cross-inscribed slabs came to light within the graveyard. These incised stones, carved in a style associated with the early medieval church, are now housed at the Nenagh Heritage Centre rather than remaining at the site.