It came to light only in 2015, during an archaeological excavation of the church, and what the dig revealed was not simply an old burial container but a finely worked piece of medieval craftsmanship, still sitting exactly where it was first placed. A sarcophagus of this kind is a carved stone coffin, shaped to follow the contours of a human body, and this one dates to the thirteenth century. It has not been moved since.

The coffin was found oriented east to west, as Christian burial convention required, and positioned roughly six metres from the eastern end of the chancel, slightly raised above the medieval floor level. It is made from fossiliferous limestone, a stone that contains the visible remains of ancient marine organisms within its fabric, and the exterior has been carved in low relief with a row of four ogee-headed recesses. An ogee is a double curve, concave at the base and convex above, and here each recess is capped with that elegant pointed arch form that was fashionable in Gothic decorative work of the period. The shoulders of the sarcophagus are curved, the sides taper slightly inward, and the top of the side panel is finished with a flat, finely tooled surface worked with a straight chisel. The interior, by contrast, is only roughly tooled, the kind of finish that was never meant to be seen. Some damage is evident: the eastern end and part of the southern side were removed at some point in the past, before the excavation. The sarcophagus remains in situ beneath the present ground level, still in the position it has occupied since the medieval period.