Small, exposed, and rarely visited outside of pilgrimage season, it carries the physical remains of early Christian occupation in the form of an oratory, enclosures, and carved stone crosses, all of which speak to a monastic or devotional tradition that once drew people across open Atlantic water to reach it.

The island is closely associated with St Patrick, and a pattern, meaning a traditional pilgrimage circuit involving prayers at specific stations, has been observed there for centuries. The remains include a small dry-stone oratory and several cross-inscribed slabs, the kind of early medieval stonework found at other island and coastal sites along the west of Ireland where hermetic or penitential Christianity took root from around the fifth and sixth centuries onward. The crossing to the island is itself part of the devotional logic of such places; difficulty and remoteness were features, not drawbacks, for those who came to pray or do penance.