The site goes by the name Kilnananima, attached to what was once called Desmond's chapel at Ardnagrath, and the association with so consequential a figure sits quietly in this overlooked corner of Kerry without much fanfare around it.

Gerald the Great was the last in a line of powerful Munster lords who had spent decades resisting Tudor authority in Ireland. His death in 1583, in the final collapse of the Desmond Rebellions, effectively ended the independent power of the Munster Geraldines and opened the way for the Munster Plantation. By 1837, the topographer Samuel Lewis recorded the chapel ruins and burial ground at Ardnagrath, noting the tradition that Gerald's remains were interred there. An Ordnance Survey letter from 1841 placed Kilnananima at the northern end of the townland, noting in the same breath the ruins of a nearby castle called Ardnacraga to the east, and a holy well named Tobernafune close by. Holy wells, known in Irish as tobar, were long associated with early Christian sites and often mark settlements of considerable age, lending this cluster of features a density of history unusual even by Kerry standards.

A survey carried out in 2011 found the church ruins in poor condition, heavily overgrown and partly disturbed by later tomb construction. The graveyard sits on the crest of a hillock with open views to the west, sheltered by the higher ground around it. Entry is through dressed limestone piers with a wrought-iron gate, but immediately to the south there is also a traditional stone stile, its projecting flagstone steps still intact in the east wall, offering a second way in that has the feel of something used for a very long time.