During the Penal era, when laws severely restricted Catholic religious practice in Ireland, congregations would gather outdoors at a designated bush or rock, often in remote or sheltered spots, to hear Mass celebrated by a priest who risked serious legal consequences for doing so. These sites are known as Penal Mass stations, and while many have been forgotten entirely, the one at Vilanstown has a quiet, layered presence that sets it apart from a simple clearing in a field.

The site at Vilanstown was in use during the eighteenth century, when the practice of gathering at such outdoor stations was common across rural Ireland. What makes this particular location somewhat unusual is its proximity to an earlier monastic settlement, suggesting that the land itself had accumulated religious significance over a much longer period, and that the choice of this spot for clandestine worship may not have been entirely accidental. In 1936, a memorial was placed at the site, giving physical form to what had previously existed only in local memory and oral tradition. The nearest surviving record of the site in the modern period comes from a small information panel inside the western porch of the Roman Catholic church at Gainestown, where the history of the mass-bush was set down for parishioners and visitors alike.