Local tradition holds that a church once stood here, one attributed, in the manner that rural memory often works, to Oliver Cromwell himself.

The Cromwellian association is worth pausing on. Cromwell's campaigns in Ireland during the 1640s and early 1650s left an outsized mark on the landscape and on collective memory, and his name became attached, across many counties, to ruins, earthworks, and structures that may or may not have any genuine connection to his forces. Whether the building at Ahanure was raised by Cromwellian soldiers, requisitioned during that period, or simply damaged and abandoned in its aftermath, the local name suggests it lodged itself in the area's memory as something imposed from outside, something that arrived with force rather than devotion. The site sits beside the Kilbride River, and the placename Ahanure itself derives from the Irish, pointing to a ford or river crossing, which would have made this a strategically legible location for any occupying force moving through the landscape.