On the ground, that building no longer exists as a discrete structure; it has been quietly absorbed into an extension of the surrounding graveyard, its outline dissolved into the landscape of the dead. That kind of quiet erasure is easy to miss, but it says something worth pausing over: that even within a complex already thick with early Christian and medieval remains, there are layers that have slipped further still from view.

Kilmalkedar, known in Irish as Cill Maoilchéadair, sits at the foot of the western slopes of Reenconnell hill on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. The ridge behind it peaks at around 907 feet, and the hill sends out spurs to the north and south that shelter the site from the prevailing weather off the Atlantic, with Smerwick Harbour visible below. The ecclesiastical complex here is one of the more significant Early Christian and medieval groupings in Munster, comprising a Romanesque church, a carved alphabet stone, an ogham stone (a form of early medieval script carved in notches along a stone's edge), a sundial, and a souterrain, which is an underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlement. The oratory now gone from the surface would have been a small, simple rectangular or boat-shaped stone building used for private prayer, a type well known from sites along the western seaboard.

Visitors to Kilmalkedar today will find the graveyard still in use, layered with centuries of burial, and the Romanesque church ruin at its centre is well preserved and clearly legible. The spot where the oratory once stood, incorporated into the graveyard extension, is harder to identify without knowing to look for it, which is perhaps reason enough to look.