Some were worked back into the building during excavation; others simply rest nearby, their original purpose debated. A few of the fragments displayed roughly five metres to the south-east of the church may once have formed the shafts of stone crosses or elements of a shrine, which is to say they could be the remnants of objects that were themselves focal points of devotion rather than mere structural components.

The fragments came to attention during Mícheal Duignan's 1944 excavation of the ecclesiastical enclosure surrounding St Peakaun's Church, a site with early Christian origins. The dig produced, among other things, a small capital decorated with scalloping, a carved ornamental motif common in Romanesque stonework, along with plain archstones from windows and two water stoups, the small basin-like vessels used for holding holy water at a church entrance. The east and south window remains were reinserted into the church walls, but the rest of the recovered material remained loose. Waddell and Holland, writing in 1990, catalogued these finds alongside the standing fabric of the church, leaving open the question of what exactly the more ambiguous pieces once formed part of.