Objects associated with saints and church leaders were venerated for their miraculous powers and were an important feature of religious life in early medieval Ireland.

[3] Irish monasticism generally avoided dissecting the actual remains of its leaders for relics but valued objects with which they had had close personal contact.

Revered for their association with divine intervention, water drunk from the reliquaries was said to cure illnesses and bring good fortune.

The bell shrine was revered for centuries by the local population and is said to have been discovered inside a tree at Kilcuilawn near Glankeen.

It was purchased by the Anglo-Irish antiquarian Thomas Lalor Cooke of Birr, County Offaly, who also owned several other early medieval hand bells and fragments.

[11] In 1825 Cooke wrote that the St. Cuileáin shrine had been discovered "some centuries before, in a hollow tree, at a place called Killcuilawn...in the parish of Glankeen...[and that]...Mrs. Dunn, to whom the Barnaan Cuilawn descended as an heirloom' from her ancestors, named Spillane, used until recently to earn a livelihood by hiring it out for people to swear upon [i.e. to swear their innocence when accused of theft]... [and that it was carried] in a strong leathern case (purposely prepared for it).

It contains red and yellow enamel settings, and interlace patterns achieved through champlevé, inlaid copper and silver wires placed on bands of niello.

[18][19] The archaeologist Cormac Bourke speculates that given the similarities and contemporary dating, the shrine's now lost cross would have resembled that from Cong.

Their eyebrows are inlaid (material inserted into depressions in the base object) with niello and have crossing lines of silver wire [5] Two inwards facing human heads are placed at the pinnacles of the short-sides ("B" and "D") of the crest, between the eyes of the two animals.

The figure's eyebrows and triangular moustaches were made with niello (a black mixture used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal).