Roughly the size of a large loaf of bread, it is D-shaped in cross-section, measures just 24 centimetres across and 39 centimetres in length, and runs along its flat face a precise U-shaped groove, 3 centimetres wide and 2 centimetres deep. Nobody is entirely certain what it once belonged to. It may have been part of a grave monument, or perhaps the base of a font or stoup, the small basin used to hold holy water at a church entrance. What it demonstrates, quietly, is that even the unidentified and incomplete can carry weight.

Kilmalkedar, known in Irish as Cill Maoilchéadair, sits at the foot of the western slopes of Reenconnell hill, which rises to 276 metres to the north-east, sheltering the site on its northern and southern sides. The complex as a whole belongs to an Early Christian and medieval ecclesiastical tradition, and overlooks Smerwick Harbour on the Corca Dhuibhne, or Dingle, Peninsula. The stone fragment was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a foundational catalogue of the area's extraordinary density of early monuments, and it has rested in the chancel of the church since at least that time. Its carved groove suggests it was worked with care and intention, shaped to serve some specific architectural or liturgical purpose that the surviving portion alone cannot resolve.