Early documents refer to the saint as 'St Duilech of Clochar', and it is the name Clochar rather than St Doulagh's which is used for the place in many Irish documents up to the late 1500s. A curved ditch to the NE of the graveyard wall is indicative of an early Christian enclosure and suggests that there may have been religious occupation of the site from the 6th or 7thc. It appears that by the 12thc this monastery had all but fallen into decay. In 1179, Pope Alexander III granted the church lands at Clochar to Lawrence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, but unlike numerous other sites listed in the grant, there is no mention of a church building here. No mention is made of a church in the Papal taxations of the early 14thc., and it is not until 1406 that the first definite reference to the church of St Doulagh is made, when indulgence was granted by Archbishop of Armagh, Nicholas Fleming, to all those who would 'visit the chapel of the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul [...] Seynt Dulagh vulgarly called, in the Diocese of Dublin'
The church was restored in the 18thc, and again in the 19thc when the current nave was constructed to the designs of the architects Lynn and Lanyon.
