At the western end of the Fair Green, just south of Kilcock village in County Kildare, sits a small, rectangular stone base that most locals will tell you is the remnant of the town's old market cross. What remains is modest: a low block of what appears to be granite, with a broad mortice cut into its upper surface, the socket that once held an upright cross shaft now long gone. It is the kind of object that could easily be passed without a second glance, yet it carries two distinct layers of purpose, one civic and one deeply solemn.

Market crosses were once a common feature of Irish and British towns, serving as the focal point for trade and public assembly, a physical declaration that commerce here was conducted under the sanction of the Church. The cross shaft slotted into precisely the kind of mortice visible on this base. Beyond its commercial role, the Kilcock stone is also remembered locally as a coffin-resting stone, a place where funeral processions would pause and set down the bier, allowing mourners to gather and prayers to be said before the burial party moved on. This dual function, market gathering point and station of the dead, was not unusual in Irish towns, where the same public stone could anchor both the business of the living and the rituals surrounding the dead. Rochfort, writing in 1999, recorded the base with a photograph and brief description, noting the local tradition attached to it.