The name Killimer derives from the Irish Cill Íomair, meaning the church of Íomar, a personal name suggesting an early medieval foundation, possibly associated with one of the many local saints who gave their names to ecclesiastical sites across Munster during the first Christian centuries in Ireland. Such early churches were often modest structures, built first in timber and later in dry stone or mortared rubble, and many were repeatedly rebuilt or enlarged over the course of the medieval period before falling into disuse during or after the upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The site sits within a small graveyard at Burrane, close to the Killimer ferry terminal where the Shannon crossing to Tarbert in Kerry has long brought travellers through what would otherwise be a quiet corner of west Clare. Burial grounds of this kind, clustered around the remnants of an early church, were in continuous use across many generations, with families returning to ancestral plots long after the church building itself became roofless and unserviceable. The layering of headstones across different centuries, some leaning at sharp angles, others worn smooth by Atlantic weather, is often the most legible history such a site offers to the casual visitor.