The Cistercians, a monastic order known for settling in remote or agriculturally productive land, established houses across medieval Ireland, and Chore was one such foundation in east Cork. That a functioning Protestant church and its burial ground now occupy the footprint of a medieval monastery is not unusual in Ireland, but it is the kind of layering that tends to pass unremarked by anyone walking past.

The broader history of Middleton adds further texture to the site. In the sixteenth century, the lands of the town were granted to the fitzGeralds of Cloyne, a branch of one of the great Anglo-Norman dynasties in Munster, and remained with them until the Cromwellian confiscations of the mid-seventeenth century displaced so many of the old Catholic and Old English landholders. In 1670, a charter of incorporation transferred the manor to Sir John Broderick and gave the new borough the right to return two members to the Irish parliament, a privilege that reflected Middleton's commercial significance. The town sat on a key road between Cork city and Youghal, and could also reach Cork Harbour through the port of Ballinacurra, making it a useful node in the movement of goods through the region. The abbey of Chore had long since vanished from practical life by then, its stones and its ground absorbed into the fabric of a town that had reorganised itself entirely around Protestant civic and commercial interests.