Today, visitors can explore an intriguing collection of ruins that tell the story of centuries of religious life and architectural evolution. The site comprises two churches, a graveyard, a monastic enclosure, and what appears to be a tower house tucked into the eastern corner of the Roman Catholic cemetery. Though marked simply as ‘Abbey (in Ruins)’ on Ordnance Survey maps, the remains offer far more complexity than this modest designation suggests.

The most enigmatic structure is the possible tower house, a compact stone building measuring 5.4 metres north to south and 10.1 metres east to west, with walls nearly a metre thick and a slight base batter. Previously misidentified as a church, this poorly preserved structure still shows traces of a barrel vault over its ground floor, with the springing visible at the eastern end. John O’Donovan, writing in the Ordnance Survey Letters, speculated that this old vault might actually be part of an Anglo-Norman castle, adding another layer to the site’s already rich history.

In 1971, the ruins yielded an unexpected discovery when a sheela-na-gig was found within the walls of the tower house. This carved female figure, known for its exaggerated anatomy and common presence in medieval Irish churches, may have originally come from an excavation for a burial just north of the structure. The presence of this mysterious carving, combined with an unlocated Early Christian cross-slab somewhere on the grounds, hints at the continuous religious significance of Rahan through different eras, from its early monastic foundations through medieval times and beyond.