The site sits roughly 140 metres east of the most easterly of the Oughtmama churches, just beyond the edge of a large ecclesiastical enclosure, and its quiet presence in such a sparsely settled mountain terrace has puzzled and intrigued researchers for decades. What makes it worth pausing over is the question it raises: why would a cluster of early Christian churches exist here at all, on a mountain shelf where sustained settlement seems unlikely?

The 1840 Ordnance Survey six-inch map labels the spot simply as "Site of Mill", while Tim Robinson's 1977 map of the Burren identifies it more precisely as a horizontal mill, a type in which water drove a wheel laid flat rather than upright, common in early medieval Ireland and well suited to small, fast-running streams. Writing in 1982, researcher Sheehan suggested that the mill may actually account for the presence of the church site nearby, the implication being that the mill provided an economic reason for a religious community to establish itself on an otherwise marginal terrace. The visible remains today consist of two parallel grassed-over stone walls, a low stony mound between them, and a mill race, the channel that directed water to the wheel, cut into the south-facing slope. That race extends some 130 metres to the north-east, with a substantial earthen bank still reaching 2.5 metres in external height along its southern edge, and traces of stone facing surviving on the bank's northern face. For a long time the race was classified in heritage records simply as an earthwork, its connection to the mill only understood when read alongside the broader landscape.