These stone vessels, used for the ritual of Christian baptism, were fixed features of their churches, often among the oldest and most carefully tended objects in a building. The font that once belonged to the medieval church at Coolcraheen, in County Kilkenny, did not stay put. At some point, its square cut-stone base and circular shaft were moved to Conahy chapel yard, several miles from where they had presumably stood for centuries, leaving the question of what exactly remains where rather pleasingly unresolved.

The historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905 in his four-volume history of the diocese of Ossory, records that the removal was carried out by Canon Hogan, the parish priest at the time. The destination was the chapel yard at Conahy, which is in the townland of Shanganny. What makes the situation more complicated is that the font was apparently not moved in its entirety. The basin, the upper bowl-shaped portion that would have held the water used in baptisms, may still be at the original site, in the graveyard that surrounds the ruined Coolcraheen church. The two locations effectively share the object between them, with the architectural base and shaft at one site and the functional heart of the font possibly at the other.