The site forms part of an extensive pilgrimage complex that once drew the faithful to this exposed mountain location. Just three metres southwest of the church, you’ll find the collapsed remains of a beehive structure, its eastern entrance partially built into the mountain slope. The church is named after Hugh Mac Bric, a bishop who died in 588 and whose feast day fell on 10th November; though as local historian Ó Muirgheasa noted, this unsuitable winter date for mountain pilgrimage likely contributed to the tradition’s eventual decline.

The sacred landscape extends well beyond the church itself. About twenty metres north stands a cross-inscribed pillar stone, whilst immediately west lies what locals call ‘the shrine’; a rectangular dry stone platform or leacht topped with a roughly shaped cross measuring just 36cm high. Three holy wells marked on Ordnance Survey maps dot the area near the church, with one positioned directly east of the shrine. According to the Martyrology of Donegal, Hugh was ‘the son of Bric, the son of Cormac, the son of Cremthann, the son of Fiacha’ and was born in Cillair of Meath before his ecclesiastical career brought him to this corner of Donegal, where tradition holds he was later buried at Racoo, near Ballintra, alongside Bishop Assicus of Elphin.

Perhaps most striking are the approximately 26 cairns strung along both edges of the ridge, serving as penitential stations for pilgrims undertaking the arduous mountain journey. Three of these stone piles may actually be the remains of ancient hut sites, suggesting the location’s use extends even further back than its Christian associations. Together, these features paint a picture of Slieve League as a place of sustained spiritual significance, where generations of pilgrims once traced ritual paths across the mountainside, marking their devotions at stone stations that still punctuate this dramatic landscape.